Graduation is one of the most important transitions we go through in our lifetime. With all the pomp and circumstance, it can be a time of great excitement, and it can also be a little scary. After becoming so familiar with our surroundings, what comes next in our story? Are we ready? From preschool to high school and beyond, these wonderfully inspirational graduation quotes are perfect for sharing with students as they step into the future.
Preschool and Kindergarten Graduation Quotes
1. All our dreams can come true—if we have the courage to pursue them. —Walt Disney
2. Wherever you go, go with all your heart. —Unknown
3. Be bold, be courageous, be your best. —Gabrielle Giffords
4. Believe you can, and you can. Belief is one of the most powerful of all problem dissolvers. When you believe that a difficulty can be overcome, you are more than halfway to victory over it already. —Norman Vincent Peale
5. Above all, watch with glittering eyes the world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. —Roald Dahl
6. Promise me you’ll remember: You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. —A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
7. The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. —J.M. Barrie
Middle School Graduation Quotes
8. Shoot for the moon today, because even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. —Les Brown
9. Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. —Dale Carnegie
10. I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail. —Muriel Strode
11. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. —Martin Luther King Jr.
12. If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. —Henry David Thoreau
13. There are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why. —Anonymous
14. Be Bright. Be Brave. Be Bold. Be Beautiful. Be Brilliant. Be You. —Paulo Coelho
High School Graduation Quotes
15. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. —Lao Tzu
16. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are. So make up your own rules. —Neil Gaiman
17. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. —Arthur Ashe
18. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. —John Dewey
19. There are better things ahead than any we leave behind. —C.S. Lewis
20. To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. —Anatole France
21. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. —Henry Stanley Haskins
22. Imagination is everything. It is the preview of coming attractions. —Unknown
More Graduation Quotes
23. Sunsets are proof endings can be beautiful too. —Beau Taplin
24. Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out. —Robert Collier
25. Do what you have to do, until you can do what you really want to do —Oprah Winfrey
26. They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel. —Carl W. Buehner
27. It is never too late to be what you might have been. —Unknown
28. So often you find that the students you’re trying to inspire are the ones that end up inspiring you. —Sean Junkins
29. Someone once told me not to bite off more than I could chew. I’d rather choke on greatness than nibble on mediocrity. —Unknown
30. Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. —Nora Ephron
31. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul. —Joseph Addison
32. It always seems impossible until it’s done. —Nelson Mandela
33. Just because the past didn’t turn out like you wanted it to doesn’t mean your future can’t be better than you ever imagined. —Anonymous
34. Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. —John F. Kennedy
35. You can. End of story. —Cory Lewis
36. It’s never crowded along the extra mile. —Wayne Dyer
37. What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. —T.S. Eliot
38. Always find time for the things that make you feel happy to be alive. —Matt Haig
39. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. —Thomas Edison
40. People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved. —Annie Sullivan
41. You don’t want to look back and know you could’ve done better. —Unknown
42. Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future. —Hannah Arendt
43. Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas. —Charles Kettering
44. I attribute my success to this—I never gave or took any excuse. —Florence Nightingale
45. What I remember most about high school are the memories I created with my friends. —J.J. Watt
46. Life—a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter. —Charles Lindbergh
47. We may be together for another six months—a year—there’s no knowing. At the end we’re certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be? —George Orwell
48. No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind. —Taylor Swift
49. We don’t see the end of the tunnel, but I must say I don’t think it is darker than it was a year ago, and in some ways lighter. —John F. Kennedy
50. Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay. —Simone de Beauvoir
51. It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning. —Henry David Thoreau
52. Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius. —An Wang
53. Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. —Miyamoto Musashi
54. The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. —Bertrand Russell
55. We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like? —Jean Cocteau
56. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. —Samuel Johnson
57. These success encourages: they can because they think they can. —Virgil
60. Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure. —Margaret Drabble
61. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. —Barack Obama
62. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. —Nelson Mandela
63. The secret in the search for meaning is to find your passion and pursue it. —Gail Sheehy
64. Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want. —Jean Vanier
65. Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. —Auguste Rodin
66. In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time. —Robert Collier
67. A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. —Kahlil Gibran
68. Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose. —Bill Gates
69. They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. —Andy Warhol
70. Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats. —Og Mandino
71. Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college. —Lillian Smith
72. You must act as if everything depended on your individual efforts. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. —Benjamin Disraeli
73. Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes. —Hugh Prather
74. If we would have new knowledge, we must get us a whole world of new questions. —Susanne Langer
75. Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. —Baruch Spinoza
76. Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory. —George S. Patton
77. Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early. —Anthony Trollope
78. The will to conquer is the first condition of victory. —Ferdinand Foch
79. Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it. —Louis-Ferdinand Céline
80. Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard. —Gene Wolfe
81. Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.
—Gwendolyn Brooks
82. The scene changes but the aspirations of men of good will persist. —Vannevar Bush
83. There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. —Colin Powell
84. Victory is not won in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later win a little more. —Louis L’Amour
85. Victory after all, I suppose! Well, it seems a very gloomy business. —J.R.R. Tolkien
86. Experience is a good school. But the fees are high. —Heinrich Heine
87. Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine. —G.I. Gurdjieff
88. The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. —Vince Lombardi
89. Each moment in time we have it all, even when we think we don’t. —Melody Beattie
90. If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. —Gail Sheehy
91. Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought. —Edward Carpenter
92. As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up, I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing. —Jimmy Carr
93. What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. —Abraham Maslow
94. Success is like a liberation or the first phase of a love affair. —Jeanne Moreau
95. It’s a moment that I’m after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment. —Andrew Wyeth
96. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. —Steven Pressfield
97. Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. —Andrew Grove
98. Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. —Michael Korda
99. Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor. —Brian Tracy
100. Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster. —Theodore Roosevelt
101. Constant practice devoted to one subject often prevails over both ability and skill. —Cicero
102. To know ourselves, is agreed by all to be the most useful Learning; the first Lessons, therefore, given us ought to be on that Subject. —Eliza Haywood
103. Throw in the intensity of emotions that come with that bittersweet summer sandwiched between high school graduation and the rest of your life … —Emily Giffin
104. The important thing is to keep on drawing when you start to paint. Never graduate from drawing. —John Sloan
105. Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared. —Eddie Rickenbacker
106. The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you’re learning, you’re not old. —Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
107. If a little day-dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. —Marcel Proust
108. When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority. —Chuck Swindoll
109. Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die. —Tom Clancy
110. We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. —Natalie Goldberg
111. Most of us won’t see one another after graduation, and even if we do, it will be different. We’ll be different. We’ll be adults—cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes. —Lauren Oliver
112. Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world. —Grace Paley
113. Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. —John Updike
114. The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance, and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning. —Oprah Winfrey
115. Courage will now be your best defence against the storm that is at hand—that and such hope as I bring. —J.R.R. Tolkien
116. The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life. —Darren Hardy
117. If you have ability in a certain area, why not capitalize on it and improve it and use it? —Wilt Chamberlain
118. That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way. —Doris Lessing
119. My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed—my dearest pleasure when free. —Mary Shelley
120. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning. —C.S. Lewis
121. Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. —Isaac Asimov
122. The dream, alone, is of interest. What is life without a dream? —Edmond Rostand
123. Your determination, selflessness and courage have brought the freedom struggle towards its fulfillment. —Gerry Adams
124. The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one’s own perfection, to make one’s every dream a reality. —Oscar Wilde
125. As for courage and will—we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead. —Andre Norton
126. A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance. —Stanisław Lem
127. Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. —Charles Buxton
128. Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person. —Warren Bennis
129. Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. —Carl Jung
130. Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming—well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true? —Amy Tan
131. You know that it is only through work that you can achieve anything, either in college or in the world. —Charles William Eliot
132. If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you. —Natalie Goldberg
133. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. —Bill Gates
134. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. —William Faulkner
135. Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use. —Ruth Gordon
136. The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing. —Elizabeth Bishop
137. To have courage for whatever comes in life—everything lies in that. —Teresa of Ávila
138. Each of us has the potential to contribute. … You have a great opportunity to make a new shape of the world. —Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
139. Wanting to win isn’t enough. You have to go through a process to improve. That takes patience, perseverance, and intentionality. —John C. Maxwell
140. Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer. —Rick Pitino
141. If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. —Samuel Johnson
142. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. —Mitch Albom
143. Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress. —Nicholas Murray Butler
144. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. —Nelson Mandela
145. Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. —Newt Gingrich
146. In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you. —Darren Hardy
147. Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them. —Louise Bogan
148. Most people, once they graduate from the School of Hard Knocks, automatically enroll in the University of Adversity. —Peter McWilliams
149. Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way, is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object shifts light. —Thomas Jefferson
150. Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use. —Thomas J. Watson
151. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious effort. —Henry David Thoreau
152. I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself. —Florence Nightingale
153. The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. —Jim Hightower
154. Don’t gain the world and lose your soul
Wisdom is better than silver and gold.
—Bob Marley
155. Lovely weather so far. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship. —Louisa May Alcott
156. Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of a life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus. —Wallace Stegner
157. Life is like a school; one can learn, one can graduate, one can skip a grade or stay behind. —Elizabeth Lesser
158. The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity. —Helen Rowland
159. He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom. —James Huneker
160. Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life’s greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned. —Taylor Caldwell
161. You are not creating a new you; you are releasing a hidden you. The process is one of self-discovery. The hidden you that wants to emerge is in perfect balance. —Deepak Chopra
162. Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. —Warren Bennis
163. Remember that the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability. —Ho Chi Minh
164. To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all. —Peter McWilliams
165. After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It’s better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. —Sophia Loren
166. Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership. —Donald Rumsfeld
167. In university they don’t tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools. Doris Lessing
168. A journey of self-discovery starts with a single step. … But so does falling down a flight of stairs. —Kathy Lette
169. It’s not getting to the wall that counts; it’s what you do after you hit it. —Darren Hardy
170. There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity. —Douglas MacArthur
171. The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage. —Thucydides
172. Adventure can be an end in itself. Self-discovery is the secret ingredient that fuels daring. —Grace Lichtenstein
173. The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history. —Carl Rowan
174. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. —Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
175. Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors! —Louisa May Alcott
Plus, check out Our Favorite Graduation Gifts for Students.
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