As you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that store-bought map and begin to draw your own.
speech graduation independence
Michael Dell
University of Texas at Austin Commencement 2003, 2003
Try never to be the smartest person in the room. And if you are, I suggest you invite smarter people — or find a different room.
speech graduation humility
Michael Dell
University of Texas at Austin Commencement 2003, 2003
It doesn't matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping. Whatever happens happens now, so live your life where the action is — now.
speech graduation carpe diem
Jerry Zucker
University of Wisconsin-Madison Commencement 2003, 2003
Right at this moment in your life, you have nothing to lose. Everything you have acquired of value is locked inside you. If you have a dream, now is the time to pursue it, before you buy furniture.
speech graduation courage
Jerry Zucker
University of Wisconsin-Madison Commencement 2003, 2003
Nobody else is paying as much attention to your failures as you are. You're the only ones who are obsessed with the importance of your own life. To everyone else, it's just a blip on the radar screen.
speech graduation failure
Jerry Zucker
University of Wisconsin-Madison Commencement 2003, 2003
True opportunity never knocks. I have found that I have to go looking for opportunity — and if I don't find it, I have to create it.
speech graduation ambition
Sumner Redstone
Kellogg School of Management Commencement, 2002, 2002
If you never venture beyond what you know, you've spawned your own limitations. You've erected the walls of your own private prison cell.
speech graduation courage
Sumner Redstone
Kellogg School of Management Commencement, 2002, 2002
At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, or a parent.
speech graduation relationships
Barbara P. Bush
Wake Forest University Commencement 2001, 2001
Where do the mermaids stand? Answer that question, and you could build a school, a nation, or a whole world on it.
speech graduation authenticity
Barbara P. Bush
Wake Forest University Commencement 2001, 2001
He was committed to lifelong learning. He settled for nothing less than excellence. He not only sought truth — Galileo believed more than anything else that he would find it.
speech graduation curiosity
Daniel S. Goldin
MIT Commencement 2001, 2001
That's the power of truth and learning and excellence — the search for what it is that ignites the human spirit, overcoming the unexpected and discovering the unknown. That's what life is all about.
speech graduation curiosity
Daniel S. Goldin
MIT Commencement 2001, 2001
Believe that the sort of life you wish to live is, at this very moment, just waiting for you to summon it up. And when you wish for it, you begin moving toward it, and it, in turn, begins moving toward you.
speech graduation courage
Suzan-Lori Parks
Mount Holyoke College Commencement 2001, 2001