Whatever you want to do, do it now. For life is time, and time is all there is.
speech graduation courage
Gloria Steinem
Tufts University Commencement 1987, 1987
Progress is not a straight line. It's a circle in which we strive to use all our talents and complete ourselves. Potentially, we are all winners.
speech graduation growth
Gloria Steinem
Tufts University Commencement 1987, 1987
Integrate what you believe into every single area of your life. Take your heart to work, and ask the most and best of everybody else too.
speech graduation authenticity
Meryl Streep
Vassar College Commencement 1983, 1983
That choice, between the devil and the dream, comes up every day in different little disguises.
speech graduation courage
Meryl Streep
Vassar College Commencement 1983, 1983
It means insisting that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be different.
speech graduation courage
Adrienne Rich
Douglass College Commencement 1977, 1977
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
speech graduation relationships
Kurt Vonnegut
Hobart and William Smith Colleges Commencement 1974, 1974
A cleaner neighborhood begins with your own broom. A more beautiful city begins with a seed in your own garden. A more just society begins in your own heart.
speech graduation responsibility
Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson
University of Virginia Commencement 1973, 1973
I do not believe that the poison clouds of polluted air must inevitably consume our atmosphere. I believe there are answers, and I think I am looking into the faces of several hundred of those answers this morning.
speech graduation nature
Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson
University of Virginia Commencement 1973, 1973
Our country is not a completed work. Over the two centuries since 1776, America has gone from beginning to beginning.
speech graduation history
Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson
University of Virginia Commencement 1973, 1973
To be in a locker room before a big game and to look into strong faces, which say, 'If we can only do it today' — to be with aggressive, ambitious people who have lost themselves in something bigger than they are — this is what living is all about.
speech graduation purpose
Joe Paterno
Penn State University Commencement 1973, 1973
Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
speech graduation courage
John F. Kennedy
American University Commencement 1963, 1963
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.'
speech graduation purpose
Martin Luther King Jr.
Morehouse College Commencement 1959, 1959