Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
speech graduation failure
J.K. Rowling
Harvard University Commencement 2008, 2008
Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.
speech graduation failure
J.K. Rowling
Harvard University Commencement 2008, 2008
And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
speech graduation failure
J.K. Rowling
Harvard University Commencement 2008, 2008
The first five minutes of the game does not decide the outcome. It never does.
speech graduation perseverance
Mike Tomlin
St. Vincent College Commencement 2008, 2008
The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something, because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough.
speech graduation perseverance
Randy Pausch
Carnegie Mellon University 'The Last Lecture' 2007, 2007
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.
speech graduation failure
Randy Pausch
Carnegie Mellon University 'The Last Lecture' 2007, 2007
The important test is whether you can get back up after being knocked down and risk failure again.
speech graduation resilience
Robert Ballard
Connecticut College Commencement 2007, 2007
Failure is merely a dress rehearsal for future success. The strength of your character comes not from how you react to your successes, but from how you react to your failures.
speech graduation failure
Larry Bock
UC Berkeley College of Chemistry Commencement 2007, 2007
Never underestimate the power of other people's love and prayer. They have incredible power. It's as if I've been carried on the shoulders of an entire army. And they had made me weightless.
speech graduation love
Tony Snow
Catholic University of America Commencement, 2007, 2007
There is no such thing as failure. What other people label or might try to call failure, I have learned is just God's way of pointing you in a new direction.
speech graduation failure
Oprah Winfrey
Howard University Commencement 2007, 2007
Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance.
speech graduation courage
Ann Patchett
Sarah Lawrence College Commencement 2006, 2006
Fear is the most corrosive force in human life. It deforms us and crushes the best in us.
speech graduation courage
Michael Ignatieff
Niagara University Commencement 2006, 2006