BEAUTIFUL LAUNCH LINES: COMMENCEMENT QUOTES

Take the First Steps. Outperform Your Idols. Aim High, Persist. Make Failure Your Fuel. Trust Your Principles. Make an Impact. Find Your Purpose.

These are just some of the inspirational words of wisdom that have been offered to graduates during commencement speeches held across the country. Thought leaders, celebrities, and a rainbow of influencers brought their own experiences and aspirations to the stage as they offered hope, compassion, encouragement and warnings.

While many aim to boost spirits and cheer graduates on… onward and upward, recent messages have included considerations of the other side, as author Morra Aarons points out in her article, Why It’s OK to Feel Unworthy on Graduation Day.

Whether or not you are a recent grad, or knows someone who is, these are life lessons we can all use. Check them out below.

ABBY WAMBACH

“Here’s something the best athletes understand, but it seems like a hard concept for non-athletes to grasp. Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.”

“Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to be powered by.”

“I learned that in order to become my very best—on the pitch and off—I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power.”

“Failure is fuel. Fuel is power . . . We must embrace failure as our fuel instead of accepting it as our destruction.”

-- Abby Wambach. Soccer Athlete. Barnard College Commencement Speech.

OPRAH WINFREY

“Say thank you to people and actually really mean it. Ask for help when you need it, and put your phone away at the dinner table. Just sit on it, really. And know that what you tweet and post and Instagram today might be asked about in a job interview tomorrow or 20 years from tomorrow.

Be nice to little kids. Be nice to your elders. Be nice to animals. And know that it’s better to be interested than interesting. Invest in a quality mattress. I’m telling you, your back will thank you later. And don’t cheap out on your shoes.”

-- Oprah Winfrey. University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism Commencement Speech.

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER

“If you’re an aspiring business person or entrepreneur, go to where the real estate is cheap and the community is strong, where new tech sectors are springing up by reinventing traditional businesses from manufacturing to media.

If you’re an aspiring architect, go renovate your hometown’s downtown, putting beautiful old buildings to new uses.”

--  Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America. Washington University Commencement Speech.

CHADWICK BOSEMAN

“When you are deciding on next steps, next jobs, next careers, further education, you should rather find purpose than a job or a career. Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill.”

-- Chadwick Boseman. Actor. Howard University Commencement Speech.

JESMYN WARD

“Weather the setbacks until you meet the gatekeeper who will open a door for you. Sometimes you are 20 when you stumble upon an open doorway. Sometimes you are 30. Sometimes you are 40 or 50 or 60. I remembered this when I felt like giving up. When I thought I thought I’d pack all my notebooks and stories into plastic bins and put them away, when I thought I would resign them to the recycling bin.”

-- Jesmyn Ward. Author. Tulane University Commencement Speech.

CHANCE THE RAPPER

“Living up to your heroes is amazing, but it’s not good enough. The difference between goodness and greatness is going beyond. You have to push forward and surpass their greatness in order to pay homage to their struggle.”

-- Chance the Rapper. Dillard University Commencement Speech. (referencing Beyonce).

RONAN FARROW

“No matter what you choose to do, no matter what direction you go, whether you are a doctor treating refugees or a financier making money off foreclosures — and I genuinely hope you don’t do that — you will face a moment in your career where you have absolutely no idea what to do. Where it will be totally unclear to you what the right thing is for you, for your family, for your community.

And I hope in that moment that you’ll be generous with yourself, but trust that inner voice. Because more than ever, we need people to be guided by their own senses of principle, and not the whims of a culture that prizes ambition, and sensationalism, and celebrity, and vulgarity, and doing whatever it takes to win.

Because if enough of you listen to that voice — if enough of you prove that this generation isn’t going to make the same old mistakes as the one before — then doing the right thing won’t seem as rare, or as hard, or as special.”

-- Ronan Farrow. Journalist. Loyola Marymount University Commencement Speech.

TIM COOK

“Now, if you’re anything like I was on graduation day, maybe you’re not feeling so fearless.

Maybe you’re thinking about the job you hope to get, or wondering where you’re going to live, or how to repay that student loan. These, I know, are real concerns. I had them, too. But don’t let those worries stop you from making a difference.

Fearlessness means taking the first step, even if you don’t know where it will take you. It means being driven by a higher purpose, rather than by applause.”

-- Tim Cook. CEO, Apple. Duke University Commencement Speech.

JIMMY FALLON

“If I could give you one last piece of advice, it would be this: Don’t ever get off your parents’ wireless plan. Ride that train as long as possible, because you don’t know how expensive data is.”

-- Jimmy Fallon. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Commencement Speech.

Read more about Beautiful Graduation in A Journey to Celebrate Graduations: Camino De Santiago.

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1. Image: Charlie Nguyen. Untitled.
2. Image: by Meghan Hess. “Mortarboards and bubbles.”
3. Image: Steve Dorsey. “The Apple.”
4. Image: by DVIDSHUB. “USS Normandy Provides Aid in Haiti.”
5. Image: by Tawheed Manzoor. “Key to the open door.”
6. Image: by Ubé. “Botijoncé (botijo 1621).”
7. Image: Health monitoring campaign for refugees in Kenya. Alliance of International Doctors' (AID) health monitoring campaign in Somalia refugee camps. Courtesy of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation.
8. Image: by Eddi van W. “First steps.”
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10. Image: by James Jordan. “Helping nature along.”
11. Image: by Illinois Springfield. “Commencement 2018.”
12. Image: by COD Newsroom. “College of DuPage Celebrates 50th Commencement.”
13. Image: by Dave Herholz. “Pomp and Circumstance.”