Finishing university is a big moment. A big fat scary moment, but one well worth celebrating, which is why you need graduation quotes and wishes to pass on to the successful graduate in question.
It is potentially scary yes, but on the other hand it is also a fresh start. It's that moment where schooling ends and the wide world beckons. What better time to offer advice and wisdom using the profound and witty words of others? Find Me A Gift's graduation quotes and messages will help you do exactly that.
Whether you're looking for a graduation message that is inspirational, frivolous or heartfelt you should be able to find it here. Take our graduation quotes and give them your own twist and wish the best to an officially educated bod you know!
"Believe that if you make courageous choices and bet on yourself and put yourself out there, that you will have an impact, as a result of what you do. And you don't need to know now what that would be or how will it happen because no one ever does."
DICK COSTOLO
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"Opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor."
Jackson Browne
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"Graduation is only a concept. In real life every day you graduate. Graduation is a process that goes on until the last day of your life. If you can grasp that, you'll make a difference."
Arie Pencovici
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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill
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"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm."
Vince Lombardi
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"To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only dream, but also believe."
Anatole France
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"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught."
Oscar Wilde
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"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."
Benjamin Franklin
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"The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after."
Newton D. Baker
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"You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world."
Tom Brokaw
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"Don't just be yourself. Be all of yourself. Don't just live. Be that other thing connected to death. Be life. Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun."
Joss Whedon
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"Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honours!"
Louisa May Alcott
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"The daily activity that contributes most to happiness is having dinner with friends. The daily activity that detracts most from happiness is commuting. Eat more. Commute less."
David Brooks
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"Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars."
Richard Halliburton
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
Albert Einstein
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"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never in nothing, great or small, large or petty never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense."
Winston Churchill
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"I knew looking back at the tears would make me laugh, but I didn't know looking back on the laughs would make me cry."
"Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women."
Nora Ephron
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"All that stands between the graduate and the top of the ladder is the ladder."
"At graduation you wear your square-shaped mortarboards. My hope is that from time to time you will let your minds be bold, and wear sombreros."
Paul Freund
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"Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition."
Steve Jobs
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"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson."
"Whatever you are, be a good one: a great."
Abraham Lincoln
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"I don't know the key to success, but I do know the key to failure is trying to please everyone."
"Once you choose hope anything is possible."
"Oh, the places you will go."
"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default."
JK Rowling
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"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Mark Twain
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"Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye."
Helen Keller
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"Wherever you go, go with all your heart."
"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
E.E. Cummings
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"There are many more jobs out there than you have ever heard of. Your dream job might not yet exist. If you had told 'College Me' that I would become a professional YouTuber, I would've been like, “That is not a word, and it never should be.”"
John Green
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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
"Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there."
Will Rogers
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"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
William Jennings Bryan
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"Be nice to people on the way up because you meet them on your way down."
Jimmy Durante
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"It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. Changes are like obstacles on a speed course. They demand your attention and require you to be present. They are coming. They are here. And then they are gone. It's how life comes. Each moment is a procession from the future into the past and the sweet spot is always the present. Live in that sweet spot. Be present."
Wynton Marsalis
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"Life has a very simple plot: first you're here and then you're not."
"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art."
Neil Gaiman
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"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go."
"The great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself."
David McCullough Jr.
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"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing you will be successful."
Albert Schweitzer
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"You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the number of times you get back up."
Aaron Sorkin
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"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt
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"I waited a long time out in the world before I gave myself permission to fail. Please don't even bother asking. Don't bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it."
Peter Dinklage
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"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
Henry David Thoreau
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"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Ferris Bueller
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"Twenty years from now you'll be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw of the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain
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"This above all else: to thine own self be true."
William Shakespeare
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"Do, or do not. There is no try."
"Pausing allows you to take a beat to take a breath in your life. As everybody else is rushing around like a lunatic out there, I dare you to do the opposite."
Maria Shriver
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"Coach said, “The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavour.”"
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Make sure you can write this sentence: “I am who I always wanted to be.”"
Sanjay Gupta
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"It's better to be a failure at something you love than a success at something you hate."
George Burns
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"If you trust in yourself and believe in your dreams and follow your star you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy."
Terry Pratchett
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"Be careful who you call crazy. Some of us think it's a compliment."
Marilynn Dawson
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"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
Nelson Mandela
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"There are few things that get you over your own crap more than working hard."
Adam Savage
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"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
Robert Louis Stevenson
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"Fortune does favour the bold, and I promise that you will never know what you're capable of unless you try."
Sheryl Sandberg
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"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
George Bernard Shaw
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"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door."
Milton Berle
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"I found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks."
Denzel Washington
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"The definition of success changes. Success is to live your life with integrity and not give in to peer pressure to be something you're not. Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else's path; unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path, then by all means, you should follow that."
Ellen DeGeneres
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"After we graduate tonight, we no longer have to let society happen to us. We get to create our own."
Rachel Maddow
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"In life, the things that go wrong are often the very things that lead to other things going right."
Arianna Huffington
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"Avoid people who tell you that something you want to do is not possible."
Fred Armisen
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"I just listened to that inner voice. By the way, it's always a good move to listen to that inner voice. As long as it doesn't lead to a crime."
Lisa Kudrow
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"Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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"Hopefully life is long. Do stuff you will enjoy thinking about and telling stories about for many years to come. Do stuff you will want to brag about."
Rachel Maddow
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"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
Steve Jobs
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We're confident that in amongst our selection of graduation quotes, messages and wishes you'll have found that little bit of wisdom you were looking for. That piece of essential knowledge in a quote-shaped nugget ripe for imparting on a graduate you love.
