Valedictorian is an academic title of success used in the United States, Canada, Philippines, and Armenia, for the student who delivers the closing or farewell statement at a graduation ceremony. Inspirational valedictorian quotes will brighten up your day and make you feel ready to take on anything.
If you’re searching for famous education quotes and famous life lesson quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of top study quotes, popular college quotes and encouraging homework quotes.
Famous Valedictorian Quotes
It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete. Norman Cousins
Do all the other things, the ambitious things—travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes…but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. George Saunders
Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do. Oprah Winfrey
You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. Tom Brokaw
Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table. Barack Obama
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive: easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. Henry Peter Brougham
As you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that store-bought map and begin to draw your own. Michael Dell
There is nothing more beautiful than finding your course as you believe you bob aimlessly in the current. Wouldn’t you know that your path was there all along, waiting for you to knock, waiting for you to become. This path does not belong to your parents, your teachers, your leaders, or your lovers. Your path is your character defining itself more and more everyday like a photograph coming into focus. Jodie Foster
What we learn with pleasure we never forget. Alfred Mercier
Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors! Louisa May Alcott
You can’t control how smart you are, how funny you are, how good-looking you are. The one thing you can control in your life is how hard you work. Ian Brennan
Inspiring Valedictorian Quotes
And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Neil Gaiman
Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. Frederick W. Robertson
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin
For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right. Tim Cook
The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after. Newton D. Baker
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. William S. Burroughs
Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. Nora Ephron
You don’t go to university so you can punch a clock. You go to university so you can be in a position to make a difference. Janet Napolitano
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing, but what you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself. Alan Alda
Girls are more academically powerful. They make the grades, they run the student activities, they are the valedictorians. Christina Hoff
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. Mark Twain
The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you. B.B. King
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul. Joseph Addison
Life is the most exciting opportunity we have. But we have one shot. You graduate from college once, and that’s it. You’re going out of that nest. And you have to find that courage that’s deep, deep, deep in there. Every step of the way. Andrew Shue
Graduation speeches force you to reflect. They are about consciousness. Nothing is better than consciousness. Bruce Eric Kaplan
Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Amazing Valedictorian Quotes
Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. Martin Luther King Jr.
We may live in an age of instant messaging, instant gratification and Instagram, but there is no way to short circuit the path to success. Tory Burch
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. Christopher Reeve
Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated. Garry Trudeau
Not only can you not plan the impact you’re going to have, you often won’t recognize it when you’re having it. Dick Costolo
I encourage you to live with life. Be courageous, adventurous. Give us a tomorrow, more than we deserve. Maya Angelou
That diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner’s permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don’t have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person. Jimmy Iovine
It is absolutely still possible to make a difference. Michelle Obama
The highest result of education is tolerance. Helen Keller
God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars. Elbert Hubbard
For many, graduation marks the end of formal student life – the end of long spring breaks and of thinking that a 10 A.M. class is far too early. Alexa Von Tobel
We all go through life bristling at our external limitations, but the most difficult chains to break are inside us. Bradley Whitford
We’re not just gathered here on a lovely May day in an ordinary auditorium at SF state. We’re all strapped in, seated together on a gigantic ball whirling around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, nested in a galaxy hurtling through the depths of space and time at 1.3 million miles per hour. Kirk Schneider
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. Malcolm X
Graduation is a time of completion, of finishing, of an ending, however, it is also a time of celebration of achievement and a beginning for the new graduate. Catherine Pulsifer
No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are. Taylor Mali
