Life will happen to you, whether you try to guide it or not, so you might as well try to influence the outcome. You have to know what you want and you have to be willing to go after it.
speech graduation courage
David Cote
University of New Hampshire Commencement 2011, 2011
Happiness is love. Full stop. The surest way to measure whether a person is happy, healthy and well is to ask: How deeply is that person enmeshed in deep passionate commitments?
speech graduation love
David Brooks
Rice University Commencement 2011, 2011
You don't need to panic if you don't yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come.
speech graduation purpose
David Brooks
Rice University Commencement 2011, 2011
There will be many doors along your path, and behind each of those doors will be things that can change you and your lives. But you will recognize them only if you have embraced a philosophy of appreciating everything that happens to you.
speech graduation growth
Sergio Marchionne
University of Toledo Commencement 2011, 2011
Opportunity can be manufactured. You can wait around for the right set of circumstances to fall into place and then leap into action, but you can also create those set of circumstances on your own.
speech graduation entrepreneurship
Biz Stone
Babson College Commencement 2011, 2011
You can't do it alone. Be open to collaboration. Other people and other people's ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.
speech graduation relationships
Amy Poehler
Harvard College Class Day 2011, 2011
You get some success. You run into some walls. And it's how tenacious you are, how irrepressible, how ultimately optimistic and tenacious you are about it that will determine your success.
speech graduation perseverance
Steve Ballmer
University of Southern California Commencement, 2011, 2011
Passion is the thing that you find in your life that you can care about, that you can cling to, that you can invest yourself in, heart, body, and soul.
speech graduation passion
Steve Ballmer
University of Southern California Commencement, 2011, 2011
Thankfully, dreams can change. If we'd all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.
speech graduation growth
Stephen Colbert
Northwestern University Commencement, 2011, 2011
They know 'vision' — but they don't see it. They know 'passion' — but they don't feel it. They know 'integrity' — but they don't live by it. They know the words — but they don't know the music.
speech graduation passion
Joe Plumeri
William & Mary Commencement 2011, 2011
Success, like happiness, can't be pursued. It must ensue as the unintended byproduct of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
speech graduation success
Chris Waddell
Middlebury College Commencement 2011, 2011
The world you live in has three problems: it is too unstable, it is too unequal, and it is completely unsustainable.
speech graduation leadership
Bill Clinton
Yale University Class Day 2010, 2010