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

At commencement 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

When you leave here, don’t forget why you came. ~Adlai Stevenson, to college graduates

Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed. ~Erma Bombeck

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated. ~Garry Trudeau

Of course there’s a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don’t take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates. ~A. Lawrence Lowell

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. ~Vince Lombardi

I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back. ~Fred Allen

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. ~e.e. cummings, 1955

The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philosophical enough to accept the fact that you will never make much money. ~Author Unknown

A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep. ~W.H. Auden

Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these. ~Susan B. Anthony

I hope that my achievements in life shall be these - that I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered, and that I will have given help to those who were in need that I will have left the earth a better place for what I’ve done and who I’ve been. ~C. Hoppe

During my second year of nursing school our professor gave us a quiz. I breezed through the questions until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” Surely this was a joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our grade. “Absolutely,” the professor said. “In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello.” I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy. ~Joann C. Jones