Quotes for a graduation speech

Great things grow from small beginnings, so start with what is right in front of you. The original says the journey begins “beneath one's feet.”

Shallow knowledge makes people overconfident; only deep study makes them humble and wise. Pope's advice is to learn deeply or not at all.

A teacher's influence passes from student to student and generation to generation, so no one can say where it ends.

The melancholy Jaques compares life to a play in seven acts, from baby to old age. It is a witty, gloomy view of life that the play quietly answers.

Latin for “love of fate.” Nietzsche used it for the attitude of wanting your life exactly as it is, hard parts included, instead of merely putting up with it.

If you spend even a little less than you earn, you are fine. If you spend even a little more, you are in trouble. The size of the gap matters less than which side of the line you are on.

A skill takes so long to master that one lifetime is barely enough. It is a call to start now and to respect how much there is to learn.

A call to public service at the height of the Cold War. The very next sentence widens the same challenge to the whole world, which is the half most people never quote.

Gandhi did write that changing ourselves changes how the world treats us. The neat one-line slogan is a modern paraphrase that does not appear anywhere in his writings.

Small, regular spending adds up. A habit that seems too minor to matter can drain your money as surely as a big mistake.

Latin for “seize the day,” or more literally “pluck the day” like ripe fruit. Horace tells a friend to enjoy today instead of worrying about a future no one can know.

Said by Mandela at the launch of an educational broadcasting project. For a man whose people had been denied decent schooling under apartheid, education was a form of liberation.

Emerson means we become strong by harnessing forces greater than ourselves, like wind, water and great ideas, and letting them carry our work. Aim your effort in the direction those higher powers already move.

Dickinson pictures hope as a small bird that lives in the soul, sings without stopping through every storm, and never asks for anything in return.

The popular summary of Socrates' wisdom: he was wiser than others only because he knew the limits of his knowledge. The exact phrase is a later compression of what Plato wrote.

Thoreau explains why he moved to Walden Pond: to strip life down to its essentials and find out what it really has to teach, so that he would not reach death and discover he had not lived.

Jordan lists his missed shots and lost games and says those failures are the reason for his success. The words were spoken by Jordan in a Nike ad written by its agency.

Newton credits earlier scientists for making his discoveries possible. He borrowed the image of dwarfs on giants' shoulders from medieval scholars.

Douglass's argument that freedom is never handed over by those in power. It has to be demanded, and the demand will be uncomfortable.

Einstein says knowledge is limited to what we already understand, while imagination reaches beyond it. He was describing how he made discoveries.

King's answer to clergymen who called him an outside agitator. Because all communities are tied together, he argued, he had every right to be in Birmingham.

Roosevelt's defense of people who try and fail over critics who never try. It was part of a long speech in Paris about the duties of citizens in a democracy.

Dickens describes the years before the French Revolution as a time of extremes, then adds the sting: it was much like his own day, when people also insisted everything was either the best or the worst.

Someone who can do many things but none of them really well. Today it is often turned around to praise people with broad skills.

Latin for “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” Juvenal says that if you must pray for something, pray for these, not for wealth, power or a long life.

Don't borrow money and don't lend it, because a loan can cost you both the money and the friend, and borrowing makes you careless with what you have.

Everything flows and changes, so the river is never the same twice, and neither are you. The popular wording is a later paraphrase of Heraclitus's surviving fragments.

An hour spent idle is not free. If you could have been earning during that time, the wages you gave up are a real cost, on top of whatever you spent.

Keep wanting more and keep being willing to look foolish by trying new things. Jobs borrowed the words from the farewell issue of the Whole Earth Catalog.

Armstrong's first words as he stepped onto the Moon. He said he meant “one small step for a man,” and the missing word has been debated ever since.

A promise that justice wins in the long run, even when progress is slow. King's compact wording condenses a longer image from an abolitionist sermon of 1853.

Thoreau argues that most people work themselves to exhaustion for things they don't need, and hide their despair behind ordinary routines. Walden is his experiment in living otherwise.

Education should not just pour facts into students but light their own desire to think and to find the truth.

Said to a country in the depths of the Great Depression, days before he closed the banks. It was a plea to stop a panic that was making the crisis worse, not a general saying about bravery.

The fastest runner doesn't always win and the strongest army doesn't always conquer. Luck and timing affect everyone, so talent alone is no guarantee.

At his trial, Socrates refuses to stop questioning people about how to live, saying a life without such questioning is not worth living for a human being. He chose death over silence.

Polonius's parting advice to his son Laertes: be honest with yourself, and you will be honest with others. It is good advice from a character who rarely follows it.

Part of Santayana's argument that progress depends on memory. He was writing about how individuals and societies learn, not giving a warning specifically about politics or war.

A traveler picks one of two paths that were “really about the same,” then imagines telling the story years later as if the choice made all the difference. It is a poem about how we tell stories about our choices.

Lord Darlington, a society man in love, says that everyone is flawed, but some people still look up toward something higher. His friends tease him for being romantic.

The founding claim of the United States, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. Its authors applied it narrowly, but later generations used its own words to demand freedom and equal rights.

Whatever work is in front of you, give it everything you have, because life is short and there will be no chance to do it later.

Steady, useful work protects us from three things that ruin lives: having nothing to do, falling into bad habits, and being poor.

The present day is never ordinary. Emerson warns against the illusion that the important moment is always somewhere else, and says today is the critical, decisive day.

If you never try, you are guaranteed to fail, so take your chances. Gretzky said it to a hockey journalist in 1983, and the wording has shifted slightly since.

Parents bring children into the world and love them, but do not own them. Children have their own thoughts and their own future, and a parent's job is to send them forward, like a bow sending an arrow.

Jobs urges graduates to follow their own judgment rather than other people's expectations, because life is short. He spoke from the experience of a recent cancer diagnosis.