You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing, but what you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.
– Alan Alda
We all go through life bristling at our external limitations, but the most difficult chains to break are inside us.
– Bradley Whitford
You will never see a U-haul behind a hearse. You can’t take it with you.
– Denzel Washington
That diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner’s permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don’t have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person.
– Jimmy Iovine
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.
– J.K. Rowling
Here’s the thing: the world is not going to issue you an engraved invitation to this life.
– Sarah Heidt
Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.
– Will Rogers
Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.
– Erma Bombeck
The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.
– Vidal Sassoon
The unfortunate, yet truly exciting thing about your life, is that there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective.
– Jon Stewart
I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
– Jim Carrey
You will never have more energy or enthusiasm, hair, or brain cells than you have today.
– Tom & Ray Magliozzi
A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that ‘individuality’ is the key to success.
– Robert Orben
“Your families are extremely proud of you. You can’t imagine the sense of relief they are experiencing. This would be a most opportune time to ask for money.”
– Gary Bolding
To those of you who are graduating this afternoon with high honors, awards, and distinctions, I say, ‘well done.’ And as I like to tell the C students, you too can be president.
– Former U.S. President George W. Bush
Sometimes, your insecurities and your inexperience may lead you, too, to embrace other people’s expectations, standards or values. But you can harness that inexperience to carve out your own path, one that is free of the burden of knowing how things are supposed to be, a path that is defined by its own particular set of reasons.
– Natalie Portman
See our previous post for more about the graduating Class of 2015.
