“You should have big dreams, full dreams, not half dreams. You know, it's very simple. You can't put a large box in a small box. Well, you cannot put a full life in a small dream box. What you need is to have a box, a dream box, in a life that is as full as the potential you have today.”— Elias A. Zerhouni, news.mit.edu
“The reason you came to college is you didn't know very much. Now you know a little more. But the challenge is to keep building on it. So try something completely different - I don't care, learn something trivial. Learn it well. Sing karaoke, if you dare. Learn to fix something in the house. Help out…”— Tony Snow, publicaffairs.cua.edu
“When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.”— Jeff Bezos, businessinsider.com
“But I will tell you something very simple and obvious, which is that it is likely that human beings will find fulfillment and will be rewarded for the same qualities that they have been rewarded for for 5,000 years. And that is intelligence, hard work, honesty, a sense of character, loyalty to famil…”— Fareed Zakaria, bates.edu
“Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity. Recognize that there will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little learning in success.”— Michael Dell, graduationwisdom.com
“Create an entourage of heroes. Put their pictures on your wall, and keep them in your mind.”— David Brooks, wfu.edu
“I had to be true to myself, as hard as that was and as scary as that was, you’ve got to listen to the voice in your gut. It is individual. It is unique. It is yours. It’s called being authentic. There’s only one of you and maybe you’re not going to follow the path that other people would like to put…”— Meredith Vieira, graduationwisdom.com
“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. Don’t let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth – don’t let that get swallowed up by the great chewing compl…”— Meryl Streep, graduationwisdom.com
“So from the wise old pinnacle of my 49 years, I want to tell you that what you're looking for is already inside you. You've heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can't buy it, lease it, rent it, date it or apply for it. The best job in the w…”— Anne Lamott, graduationwisdom.com
“So how do you know what is the right path to choose to get the result that you desire? And the honest answer is this. You won’t. And accepting that greatly eases the anxiety of your life experience.”— John Stewart, americanrhetoric.com
“Follow your passion and your heart. You will need to find your passion. If you did not find it, you will find it later, in your 30s or 40s but do not give up on finding it and follow it. You will not find it in things or money because the more you have the more you will use that as a metric and woul…”— Randy Pausch, youtube.com
“Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you fai…”— Paul Hawken, culturechange.org
“Be fearless. Have the courage to take risks. Go where there are no guarantees. Get out of your comfort zone, even if it means being uncomfortable.The road less traveled is sometimes fraught with barricades, bumps, and uncharted terrain. But it is on that road where your character is truly tested — a…”— Katie Couric, web.williams.edu
“Every one of us has a calling. There is a reason why you are here. I know this for sure. And that reason is greater than any degree. It's greater than any paycheque. And it's greater than anything anybody can tell you that are you supposed to do. Your real job is to find out what the reason is and g…”— Oprah Winfrey, transcripts.cnn.com
“I want you to be potent; to do good when you can and to hold your wit and your intelligence like a shield against other people's wantonness. And above all, to laugh and enjoy yourself in a life of your own choosing and in a world of your own making. I want you to be strong and aggressive and tough a…”— Alan Alda, graduationwisdom.com
“I've always liked the story of the college student who got a C on his final paper because his idea was implausible. The idea ... an overnight delivery service. The student ... Fred Smith. You may know him better as the CEO of FedEx. So, don't let anyone else take the measure of your worth and capabi…”— Margaret Spellings, graduationwisdom.com
“The way to be happy is to like yourself, and the way to like yourself is to do only things that make you proud.”— Mark S. Lewis, graduationwisdom.com
“Know yourself and to your own self be true. You may find some day three or four years from now that you simply don't like engineering, or teaching, or architecture, or government, or the company you started with. You have little in common with the people you work with, and relative to your peers, yo…”— David L. Calhoun, graduationwisdom.com
“As you begin your new journey, you can try to remove everything that you find distasteful in the world, or you can just pour in more love. It's the only thing that the more you give away, the more you have. So take all that warm, fuzzy stuff you've been hiding and spread it around a little. And then…”— Jerry Zucker, news.wisc.edu
“Here everything is admissible— philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry, humor, fun, mimicry, anecdote, jokes, ventriloquism— all the breadth and versatility of the most liberal conversation, highest and lowest personal topics: all are permitted, and all may be combined into one speech.”— David Shields, amazon.com