Are you looking for inspiring quotes to help you decide what to do next on your path?
Here are the top 105 quotes every graduate needs to hear this year, including a compendium of quotes on passion, decisions, fear, failure, success, money and happiness from a dazzling array of those who have walked before us.
PASSION
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. — Mark Twain
Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion. — George Hegel
Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. — Oprah Winfrey
True passion attracts. If you have passion in your business, the right people will be attracted to your team. — Robert T. Kiyosaki
Passion is the genesis of genius. — Tony Robbins
Chase your passion, not your pension. — Denis Waitley
Make your passion your paycheque. — Anonymous
Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate. — Jon Bon Jovi
People with great passion can make the impossible happen. — Anonymous
Dreams and passion are more powerful than facts and reality. — Gail Lynne Goodwin
A true passion that burns within your soul is one that can never be put out. — Zach Toelke
You can do anything as long as you have the passion, the drive, the focus, and the support. — Sabrina Bryan
Follow your own passion, not your parents’, not your teachers’, yours. — Robert Ballard
If you feel like there’s something out there that you’re supposed to be doing, if you have a passion for it, then stop wishing and just do it. — Wanda Sykes
There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. — Nelson Mandela
2. Decisions
The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms. — Neal Boortz
Other people look at failure as an opportunity to revisit past decisions and to devise new strategies. — Catherine Pulsifer
We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals. — Stephen Covey
Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: we are what we chose to be. — Graham Brown
The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose. — Thornton Wilder
When one can accept that all their circumstances and life events are a result of their decision making, that individual immediately gains back their power to create. — Michael Austin Jacobs
Life presents you with so many decisions. A lot of times, they’re right in front of your face and they’re really difficult, but we must make them. — Brittany Murphy
When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. — Sigmund Freud
Choices are the hinges of destiny. — Edwin Markham
You never know when your life is about to change. You never know when one decision will dramatically impact your life and change the course of your destiny. — Dani Johnson
I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. — Maya Angelou
It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions. — Jim Rohn
We may think that our decisions are guided purely by logic and rationality, but our emotions always play a role in our good decision making process. — Salma Stockdale
Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you. — John C. Maxwell
3. Fear
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. — Steve Jobs
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. — Marie Curie
Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out. — Karl Augustus Menninger
I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. — Rosa Parks
Being brave isn’t the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but finding a way through it. — Bear Grylls
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.— Rudyard Kipling
Everything you want is on the other side of fear. — Jack Canfield
Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. — Helen Keller
Fears are nothing more than a state of mind. — Napoleon Hill
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. — Nelson Mandela
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Fear has its use, but cowardice has none. — Mahatma Gandhi
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do. — Henry Ford
Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. — Louis E. Boone
4. Failure
It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts. - Zig Ziglar
If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. — Ken Robinson
Giving up is the only sure way to fail. — Gena Showalter
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. — Thomas A. Edison
When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important. — Ellen DeGeneres
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement. - C.S. Lewis
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. — Robert F. Kennedy
Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. — Coco Chanel
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. — Johnny Cash
If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want. — Richard Yates
Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. — Denis Waitley
There is no failure except in no longer trying. — Chris Bradford
Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success. — Robert T. Kiyosaki
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. — Paulo Coelho
We are all failures - at least the best of us are. — J.M. Barrie
5. Success
Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts. — Winston S. Churchill
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. —Herman Melville
The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same. — Colin R. Davis
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. —Henry David Thoreau
Opportunities don't happen. You create them. — Chris Grosser
Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. — John D. Rockefeller
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. — Thomas Jefferson
There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed. — Ray Goforth
Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better.— Jim Rohn
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. — G. K. Chesterton
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success. — Thomas J. Watson
If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. — Jim Rohn
The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do. — Anonymous
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time. — Steve Jobs
The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere. — Barack Obama
6. Money
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. — Henry David Thoreau
You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you. — Dave Ramsey
It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. — Robert Kiyosaki
Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. — William A. Ward
Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don't want... to impress people that they don't like. — Will Rogers
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart. —Jonathan Swift
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. — Epictetus
Money often costs too much. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we've got 24 hours each. —Christopher Rice
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. — Benjamin Franklin
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. — Seneca
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. — Norman Vincent Peale
You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. — Maya Angelou
The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind. — T.T. Munger
7. Happiness
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. — Waitley
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. — Margaret Lee Runbeck
Reflect upon you present blessings, of which every man has many--not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. — Charles Dickens
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. — Dalai Lama
When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. — Helen Keller
Happiness is not having what you want. It is appreciating what you have. — Unknown
True happiness...arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self. — Joseph Addison
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. — Ayn Rand
Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be. — William Adams
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. — Dale Carnegie
Happiness is the experience of loving life. Being happy is being in love with that momentary experience. And love is looking at someone or even something and seeing the absolute best in him/her or it. Love is happiness with what you see. So love and happiness really are the same thing...just expressed differently. — Robert McPhillips
In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy. Albert Clarke
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory. — Betty Smith
You are responsible for your life. You can't keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on. — Oprah Winfrey
We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. — Gautama Buddha
