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Graduation Speech [20 Examples + Template]

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

Being selected as a commencement speaker is a great recognition, but the responsibility can be intimidating. How do you know what kind of message will hit home for the graduates at this point in their lives? How do you make your message stand out from other words of wisdom that the graduating class has heard before?

Fortunately, there are many incredible graduation speeches from which you can pull information. We’ve gathered 15 of the best graduation speech examples here to make your research and brainstorming process easier. A little studying can give you ideas for the perfect graduation speech topic and help you write your speech efficiently.

In this article:

Graduation Speech Examples

Graduation speech template.

Take note of the flow and structure of the examples, and let them guide you in creating your own graduation speech outline. Remember to practice your speech and memorize the bulk of it so you’re able to deliver with confidence. With a strong theme and plenty of practice, you’re sure to gain the audience’s attention and leave them inspired.

Here are 15 free graduation speech examples to gain inspiration from. If you like a style or message of a sample speech, use it as a model to create your own original version.

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1. Funny Valedictorian Speech

This valedictorian entertains the audience of his high school graduation speech with subtle, kind-hearted jokes that reflect the graduating class and the school faculty. The graduation speaker has a sentimental theme to his speech, but his light humor ensures that the presentation is both meaningful and memorable.

“You see, this is not goodbye. This is see you in two to 10 years when I’m significantly smarter, wealthier, funnier, and more handsome than I am right now.”

2. College Graduation Speech Example: Conan O’Brien at Dartmouth College

You don’t have to be a famous comedian to deliver a funny graduation speech, but let Conan O’Brien’s speech at Dartmouth College serve as a good model to create your own. Intertwining life advice and great jokes, O’Brien inspires graduates to get past failure and pave their own paths.

“Today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment, you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.”

3. Preschool Graduation Speech

This preschool graduation speech is a great example for teachers who need to give a commencement address. A speech for a preschool or kindergarten graduation is different, in that the speaker is mostly communicating to the parents of the graduates. This preschool teacher delivers a meaningful speech that explains the joy in her job, while touching on the humorous things the students have said over the months.

“Tomorrow I give you back your child, the same child you entrusted in my care last fall, except now I give them back to you pounds heavier, inches taller… I give them back to you a little smarter, a little more mature, and a little more responsible than they were 10 months ago.”

4. David Foster Wallace Kenyon College Commencement Speech

In what is recognized as one of the best graduation speeches of all time, David Foster Wallace affirms to a class of liberal arts students that their education taught them how to think and how to be self-aware.

“The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.”

5. Middle School Graduation Speech

A class president delivers a heartwarming message in a storytelling format at his middle school graduation ceremony.

“Once upon a time, three long years ago, a journey began. We were obedient little munchkins, climbing up stairs meant for giants, carrying heavy backpacks filled with every sort of colored pencil existing on this earth.”

6. University of Wisconsin-Madison Commencement Speech 2017

Steven Levitan, creator of the award-winning show “Modern Family,” was the commencement speaker at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the graduating class of 2017. This is a good example to follow if you’re an alum of the college you’re presenting to.

“It’s hard to believe I graduated here 33 years ago. I still have the official university photo of me receiving my diploma wearing only shorts under my cap and gown and holding a big bottle of champagne, as if to say, ‘Hey world, lower your expectations.'”

7. Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard University Commencement Speech

Successful people are often chosen as commencement speakers for university graduation ceremonies. See how the CEO and founder of Facebook is able to portray humility in relating to the 2017 graduating class at Harvard University.

“I’m honored to be with you today because, let’s face it, you accomplished something I never could. If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard. Class of 2017, congratulations!”

8. Al Roker’s Commencement Speech at Champlain College

Upon receiving his doctorate degree of humane letters, the “Today Show” weather anchor delivered an inspirational speech to the graduating class. Roker speaks to the class’s generation and relates his graduation speech topic back to his own upbringing.

“Be in the moment. Stop living through your screen. Experience it now.”

9. Steve Jobs’ Commencement Speech at Stanford University

The Apple CEO’s commencement speech at 2005 to the graduating class at Stanford University is one of the classics. Jobs tells stories about his own experiences with dropping out of college, being fired from Apple, and being diagnosed with cancer.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of the other opinion drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

10. Elementary School Graduation Speech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVOQVsbkmbM

This fifth-grade class speaker relates her teacher’s message to a lesson from her grandfather as her opening hook .

“To survive the fifth grade is not barely making it through. Instead, to survive means to perform with distinction.

11. Ellen Degeneres Commencement Speech at Tulane University

The famous talk show host and comedian Ellen Degeneres’s commencement speech at Tulane University is a great example of how a guest speaker can identify with her audience.

“It was so important for me to lose everything because I found what the most important thing is. The most important thing is to be true to yourself.”

12. University of Texas at Austin 2014 Commencement Address

Rear Admiral William H. McRaven aims to inspire his audience right from the beginning. The rear admiral encourages the graduating class to change the world, relating everyday life struggles to those of the people in the military.

“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”

13. Matthew McConaughey Commencement Speech

Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey drew from his own personal story to deliver an inspirational commencement speech at the University of Houston. McConaughey gives the graduating class 13 life lessons, including to define success for yourself and find joy in your work.

“Prioritize who you are and who you want to be. Don’t spend time with anything that antagonizes your character.”

14. Commencement Address by Jim Carrey

In his commencement address at Maharishi University of Management, actor Jim Carrey tells an emotional personal story. Carrey uses emotion to encourage the graduating class to walk their own path and never settle in life.

“Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.”

15. Stephen Colbert’s Commencement Speech at Wake Forest University

The famous comedian delivers a witty and funny graduation speech, offering students practical advice for the real world.

“And if there’s one thing you need even more, it’s your own set of standards. It may seem counterintuitive now, but once you leave here, you may miss being graded on all your work. Because when you’re out of school, there are no objective criteria for achievement anymore.”

16. Inspiring Graduation Speech

In this remarkable graduation speech, the class valedictorian makes a political statement by publicly revealing her status as an undocumented immigrant. The speech starts out with jokes, but turns into a moving performance that’s as powerful as it is fun to watch.

“To each and every single one of you, I say thank you. You taught me that it’s okay to be different and that there will always be people willing to overlook those differences and accept you for being yourself.”

17. Funny Graduation Speech

This class-elected graduation speaker has the perfect delivery of well-crafted jokes and one-liners throughout her speech. She keeps the whole class laughing and never misses a beat.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to pursuing an additional 4-year education – which I can’t afford.”

18. Moving Graduation Speech

This college graduation speech educates listeners about women’s education through the eyes of the speaker, who encountered resistance to seeking an education just because she was a woman. It’s nearly impossible to listen to this speech without feeling moved to take action.

“I couldn’t have imagined attending college, simply because we weren’t allowed to. My sisters weren’t allowed to; the girls before me weren’t allowed to.”

19. Funny Graduation Speech

This graduation speech by the senior class president is humorous and engaging. The class president reminisces with plenty of jokes in a speech full of fun memories and just the right amount of inspiration.

“I know we can all agree that this class is resilient. We survived an earthquake, two blackouts, and Ebola.”

20. Short Graduation Speech

Graduation ceremonies can be long, but the speeches don’t have to be. This short graduation speech uses an “ABCs of life” format to pack a lot of power into a short amount of time. The class president gets wild applause from the audience for his quick but clever speech.

“We must Q – quit quitting, and R – run the race with patience.”

• Thank teachers and your parents or other family members for their support, encouragement, help, aid or personal assistance during your years of studying.
• Praise accomplishments and achievements of the class.
• Reflect upon the past years, what has changed and is interesting enough to share with all?
• Mention funny and exciting events, you can opt for funny oneliners or even small innocent jokes, poems or quotations from famous people if you like.
• Motivate your fellow students and teachers and professors to look to the bright future:
• I continue with the 10 most wanted and popular graduation speech topics:
• Give advice, but avoid boring cliches that are totally not surprising.
• Entertain by telling humorous anecdotes and vivid stories. Offer an account of an interesting or humorous incident.
• Express the feelings of the class. But do not go over the top.
• Say farewell to all attendees. This acknowledgment at parting is the warming-up for the next and final step
• Wish the graduates of your class all the best and thank them for listening.

Don’t forget to:

Thank the parents and family.  Have your class honor them with applause. Not only have they made sure you showed up to school, there’s a host of other responsibilities that parents have sacrificed to accomplish for you. Now is your moment to focus on them for a minute or so.

Thank the teachers and administrators.  Each teacher or professor works many long hours that you don’t see in the classroom, and many have poured their hearts and lives into teaching. Take this moment to make it worth it for them.

Use some of my vote of thanks example expressions to feed you imagination for topics for graduation speech a little bit.

Make the address personal. When you decide to make your graduation speech personal, you will experience much bigger success. It will also be more fun to write and deliver a talk that brings high school or college to a close with recognition of the small things in education life. The memories you will run across looking through yearbooks and talking about with friends will be priceless for you as well.

Calm the nerves.  It is very intimidating to address hundreds of people in the audience while delivering a graduation speech. Many of us have fear of public speaking. Before you proceed, do this test. And practice the tips.

Consider including:

STORIES Include stories about your school. These high school graduation speech topics can be about teachers and funny things that have happened over the year.

EVENTS Include motivational or moving events that may have happened – perhaps volunteer opportunities that have changed the students’ perspective. Make sure that any major events that have happened are recognized.

Sports and music events that have been important to the school need to be recognized, even if it happened in one of the prior years of your class and not the graduating year.

CLASS EXPERIENCE Bring the class experience alive for those attending the graduation. Grandparents and parents, as well as siblings, have heard the names from school.

Bring the people to the campus life that they have heard about.

DECEASED If a fellow student or teacher has died, mention that person. Make it not a funeral obituary eulogy but recognize them for the family who might be present.

PROJECTS Mention any projects that the school has undertaken; if you have been involved in a community garden or other volunteer organization give credit for the impact it has made.

Pet Peeve Speech Topics

Commemorative Speech

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Words of Wisdom: 10 Inspirational Graduation Speeches

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Recently, Education Week and Education Week Teacher asked readers to send us 2012 high school commencement addresses that inspired them. Below you’ll find graduation remarks delivered by a superintendent, a judge, a school board member, a corporate executive, and, of course, students. In addition to the speeches submitted by readers, Education Week Commentary Intern Ellen Wexler scoured the Internet for stirring language from other high school commencement speakers. Read on, and feel free to add your own advice for the class of 2012 in the online comments section below.

I challenge you all to take everything you’ve learned from every experience, conversation, and lesson plan with you into the real world and make the best of it. No, it’s not going to be easy, nor will success knock on your door tomorrow night, but I want for you all to continue to make PROGRESS. Whether it be in school, at work, or just becoming a better person in life, always, always, always continue to make progress.

Gavin Barner Student Greensboro College Middle College, Greensboro, N.C. May 18, 2012 Read the full speech. (PDF)

Always remember, good ideas may come at you very rarely in life. Seize them, grab them, and act on them.

William A. Clark Manheim Central School District Superintendent Manheim Central High School, Manheim, Pa. June 8, 2012 Read the full speech. (PDF)

First, I believe that the world is not as ugly as it sounds. There is undue pressure put upon graduating classes that they need to go forth into society and fix it completely. We are led to think that we’re being sent off into a sick and tired planet Earth, full of chaos and disaster, on the brink of destruction, and we are supposed to roll up our sleeves like an old World War II poster and clean up the mess. But while we do owe a service to the world, I believe in a brighter outlook.

The world is not ugly, or broken. It is just much older than us, and has aged accordingly. ... It is easy to be scared by the horrors of the daily news, but I believe that it is our job to seek the good of it all—the good that will always exist amidst opposition.

Jenna Donahue President, Class of 2012 Avon High School, Avon, Conn. June 15, 2012 Read the full speech.

Complexity, diversity, and pace of change will characterize the business environment of the future, and you will necessarily have to compete in that environment by embracing change. It cannot be assumed for a minute that what was done, or was relied upon yesterday, will be viable tomorrow. ...

Don’t be satisfied with answers that are correct. Instead, train yourself to always look for better ways, better answers. Don’t settle for just being a good and competent employee. Be creative. Be innovative. See the big picture. You will have a huge advantage in the new industrial world. ...

Finally, make sure you learn to communicate well. Communication is perhaps the least-emphasized skill set in most educational programs, but I guarantee you that communication will be the ultimate key to your success.

Tom Brady Chairman, Plastic Technologies Inc.; Chairman, TECHS Governance Board Toledo Early College High School, Toledo, Ohio May 25, 2012 Read the full speech. (PDF)

I’d like to share with you just four recommendations on how to maximize the experience of college and prepare for later success in life:

• Be the first one to ask a question in class, and even more importantly, in large lecture halls. You’ll get noticed by your professors ... and, eventually, develop a relationship with your professors.
• Exercise every day.
• Take the lead to form study groups for one or more of your classes: The annual Harvard freshman study shows that students in study groups are happier and achieve higher grades than those who do all their work alone.
• Be a hero to someone. ...

Remember the words of Horace Mann in his last commencement speech in 1859: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

Patrick F. Bassett President, National Association of Independent Schools Fountain Valley School of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colo. June 26, 2012 Read the full speech. (PDF)

Character is not created with a single act, no matter how brilliant or bold. It is forged in the smallest of struggles, the product of a thousand, thousand strokes. Your tool for carving your character’s template lies, in the words of the poet Robert Lowell, within your “peculiar power to choose.” Ultimately, it is the choice of the fundamental over the frivolous, preferring what is true over what’s accepted, the choosing of what is right over what is easy.

Gary Brochu President, Berlin, Conn., Board of Education Berlin High School, Berlin, Conn. June 17, 2012 Read the full speech.

You’ve learned who you are and what needs to be done to build a better tomorrow. ... And it doesn’t have to be what we’ve done. Soccer players have stopped civil wars. The Innocence Project is ending wrongful imprisonment. Doctors stopped smallpox. Start an art studio, write inspiring folk music, build a soup kitchen. ... [M]ake a billion dollars and give it away. Just do something that makes you happy.

Elliott Witney School Leader, KIPP Academy KIPP Houston High School, Houston June 2, 2012

We were only in 2nd grade when the planes hit the World Trade Center, and we were only teenagers when the economy started to collapse. It’s hard to be so sure about your own future when the world doesn’t seem to know its own future.

But it is the generations that faced the most that turn out to make the biggest difference. We are one of those generations.

Will Eichhorn Co-valedictorian Perry Hall High School, Baltimore June 1, 2012

Is it really that difficult to find in ourselves the motivation and perseverance to keep fighting for a brighter future? All it takes is to believe that it is possible—that it is possible for us to achieve our goal, our dream. Our past is crucial for our future. We must use our past experiences to transform ourselves into an intellectual, responsible man or intellectual, responsible woman. ...

I believe that a person who endures unexpected challenges and hardship, yet emerges with an undefeated smile and a modest character, is a great leader. We must believe that we can be like those leaders and surpass what life gives us. Believing in ourselves is the greatest challenge. But believing in ourselves can also be our greatest accomplishment.

Fatima Salgado Student John Hancock High School, Chicago June 8, 2012

It was easier for me, nearly 50 years ago, than it is for you today, to believe in some basic and unchanging truths, to aspire to a code of conduct that was largely accepted as setting the standard for governing one’s actions, and to hold fast to traditional concepts of integrity and honesty. Fifty years ago, there was something akin to a generally accepted social compact, defining what was expected of people in their personal lives. The lines between right and wrong, between morality and immorality, between acceptable conduct and conduct that was to be condemned, were brighter and clearer and more easily drawn in 1965 than they are in 2012. ... You can accept personal responsibility for your actions and for your life. You do not need to be dependent on others to care for you, to protect you, to provide for you, and most importantly, to make decisions for you. Once you become dependent on others, you will discover that it is the caregiver, not you, who will determine not only how to satisfy your needs but, ultimately, what your needs are. You will sacrifice for perceived security your personal freedom to choose and chart your own course. You must not accept a life of dependency and mediocrity and forgo the opportunity to achieve great things by accepting the challenge of self-reliance.

Victor Ludwig Staunton, Va., Circuit Court Judge; President, Robert E. Lee High School Class of 1965 Robert E. Lee High School, Staunton, Va. June 2, 2012

Deputy Commentary Editor Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily contributed to this report. A version of this article appeared in the July 18, 2012 edition of Education Week

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16 Best Graduation Speeches That Leave a Lasting Impression

Some of the most impactful and inspiring sentiments are shared during graduation speeches delivered by the leaders we look up to. Graduation speeches from celebrities , entrepreneurs, authors and other influential thinkers are motivational, inspiring, thought-provoking and just might make you reach for the nearest tissue. After four years of hard work, stress, and exhausting self-discovery, lucky graduates are privy to a life-changing speech to top it all off.

Here, we rounded up up 16 of the best graduation speeches of all time, including words of wisdom from Natalie Portman, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and more.

1. Steve Jobs: Stanford, 2005

"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

2. Michelle Obama: Tuskegee University, 2015

"I've found that this journey has been incredibly freeing. Because no matter what happened, I had the piece of mind knowing that all of the chatter, the name-calling, the doubting...all of it was just noise. It did not define me, it didn't change who I was, and most importantly, it couldn't hold me back."

3. Natalie Portman: Harvard, 2015

"I just directed my first film. I was completely unprepared, but my own ignorance to my own limitations looked like confidence and got me into the director's chair. Once there, I had to figure it all out, and my belief that I could handle these things, contrary to all evidence of my ability to do so was half the battle. The other half was very hard work. The experience was the deepest and most meaningful one of my career."

4. Amy Poehler: Harvard University, 2011

"What I have discovered is this: You can't do it alone … Listen. Say 'yes.' Live in the moment. Make sure you play with people who have your back. Make big choices early and often."

5. Meryl Streep: Barnard College, 2010

"This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There's only change, and resistance to it and then more change."

6. David Foster Wallace: Kenyon College, 2005

"Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master."

7. Barack Obama: Howard University, 2016

"You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness, but action. Not just hashtags, but votes."

8. Kerry Washington: George Washington University, 2013

"You and you alone are the only person who can live the life that can write the story that you were meant to tell."

9. Conan O'Brien: Dartmouth College, 2011

"There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. Today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality … Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen."

10. J.K. Rowling: Harvard, 2008

"I stopped pretending to be anything than what I was. My greatest fear had been realized. I had an old typewriter and a big idea. Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

11. Oprah Winfrey: Harvard University, 2013

"Learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then figure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to develop an internal moral, emotional G.P.S. that can tell you which way to go."

12. Joss Whedon: Wesleyan University, 2013

"You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key—not only to consciousness–but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in. It's not just parroting your parents or the thoughts of your learned teachers. It is now more than ever about understanding yourself so you can become yourself."

13. George Saunders: Syracuse University, 2013

"Do all the other things, the ambitious things … Travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop)—but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness."

14. Nora Ephron: Wellesley College, 1996

"Be the heroine of your life, not the victim."

15. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Wellesley College, 2015

"As you graduate, as you deal with your excitement and your doubts today, I urge you to try and create the world you want to live in. Minister to the world in a way that can change it. Minister radically in a real, active, practical, get your hands dirty way."

16. Admiral William H. McRaven: University of Texas at Austin, 2014

"If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right."

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Graduation Speech Examples

50 top graduation speech ideas (& examples).

Try to search online and you’ll find a lot of graduation speech examples. If you’re in charge of giving a speech during this important event, you have the choice of whether to compose a long or short graduation speech. As long as you’re able to convey your message, the length isn’t that relevant.

Table of Contents

• 1 Graduation Speech Examples
• 2 What should you write about in your graduation speech?
• 3 Graduation Speech Outlines
• 4 Structuring your graduation speech
• 5 Graduation Speech Templates
• 6 High School Graduation Speech
• 7 Tips for writing graduation speech
• 8 College Graduation Speech

What should you write about in your graduation speech?

Most people wonder what to write for their graduation speech examples. Whether you need to compose a high school graduation speech example or a college graduation speech example, you must put a lot of careful thought and consideration into the contents of your speech.

In the past, writing a graduation speech template wasn’t that intimidating. But now, you should remember that there’s a high likelihood that the people present at the event will post your speech on social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube. This makes it imperative that you compose a speech that’s effective, interesting, and won’t end up offending anyone.

A lot of incredible speakers start their speech-writing process by creating an outline. So, if you want to come up with a great speech, you may want to start off with a graduation speech outline . Here, you include everything you want to include in your speech. From there, writing becomes easier.

Graduation Speech Outlines

Structuring your graduation speech

When it comes to the structure of your graduation speech, you have a few options to choose from. As you create your graduation speech outline, you’re giving it a structure for you to follow when it’s time to start writing.

You may create a long or short graduation speech depending on how much you want to say and how long you want to stand in front of the graduating class. You can even create a graduation speech template using the structure of your choice. This makes it easier for you for the next time you need to come up with a speech.

If you have no idea where to start, you may go online and read high school graduation speech examples or college graduation speech examples. Use these as your reference or for your inspiration as you write your speech.

Graduation Speech Templates

Either way, these examples will be a great help to you if it’s your first time to compose such a speech. To guide you, here are some structures to follow for your graduation speech:

• Use a few themes which you illustrate with non-fictional or personal stories For this type of speech, you can use a couple of themes which you introduce early in your speech. From reaching their dreams of finding their own place in the world, there are so many themes to choose from. Then illustrate these themes further using non-fictional examples or stories from your personal life.
• Use several themes which you illustrate with short anecdotes or personal stories For this structure, you come up with a number of themes for your audiences. But instead of sharing those themes at the start of your speech, you share short anecdotes or personal stories which illustrate those themes. Then you give helpful advice to your audience to help them in their future endeavors. However, this structure isn’t ideal for short graduation speeches. Since you’re going to use several themes, this means that your speech would be relatively long. Therefore, it’s probably a good idea to use this for a college graduation speech, not one for a high school graduation .
• Use an autobiographical narrative If you plan to use this structure for your graduation speech examples, it means that you want to open up and share more details about your life to your audience. It’s sort of like a mini-memoir wherein the audience learns a lot about the experiences you’ve had in your personal life. As you share these experiences, you also share a lot of life lessons with them. Although you don’t give advice directly at the beginning of your speech, you would incorporate these little bits of advice throughout your speech. Talk about your own experiences after graduation, how you dealt with the real world, and how you overcame different kinds of challenges.
• Use the main theme and some personal references Finally, you can also structure your speech in such a way that you’re leading up to one main theme or point. A lot of people find this structure to be extremely difficult to put together because they feel like it’s too limited. But as long as you create a graduation speech outline, following this structure won’t be that much of a challenge.

High School Graduation Speech

Tips for writing graduation speech

Whether you’re representing the graduation class or you’re asked to come and give a speech to the graduating class, you have to come up with your own graduation speech. The good news is that there are a lot of graduation speech examples which you can use as a reference.

Writing a graduation speech doesn’t have to be a difficult task. As long as you have an idea of what to write and you know what you want to say to the graduating class, the words will start flowing from your mind. But if you need some help, here are some tips to guide you:

• Brainstorming Any great speech starts with a brainstorming session. You can begin by asking yourself what you want to write in your speech. If you’re the representative of the graduating class, then think about all of the learning and experiences you’ve gained throughout your education. If they asked you to speak for the graduating class, then think about the advice you want to share to them in order to inspire them and somehow prepare them for what’s to come. Brainstorming involves a lot of thought, especially about the future. There’s nothing wrong with talking about the past and the present but since you’ll speak to a graduating class, talking about the future is much more relevant. As you think about the things to say, write everything down on a piece of paper. Later on, you can review your ideas to see which ones to keep and which ones to remove from your speech.
• Choosing a theme After your brainstorming session, you’d have a lot of ideas, stories, and advice to share to your audience. Now it’s time to begin shaping all of these into one coherent speech. To do this, you may want to think about the theme to focus on for your speech. Whether you want to choose a single theme or a collection of themes which you will link with one another, this step makes speech writing easier. Also, having a theme makes the speech more memorable and impactful to the audience. With a theme, you’ll also be able to sort through the things you’ve written down more effectively only choosing the ones which relate to your theme.
• Building the structure After you’ve identified the theme, you can start building the structure of your graduation speech. Here are some steps to help you out: Make sure that your introductory statement grabs the attention of your audience right away. In other words, get the audience “hooked” from the beginning so they will feel compelled to listen to your entire speech. Illustrate the theme you’ve chosen by telling stories. Keep in mind that the best stories always have a beginning with a challenge or obstacle, a middle where you share how you overcame it, and an end where you discussed how this experience helped you grow. For the end of your speech, tie together all of the points you’ve discussed throughout your speech. Also, make it clear how your message applies to your audience. You may also share valuable advice to your audience in the conclusion of your speech.
• Practicing your delivery Even after you’ve written your speech, the work doesn’t end there. You also have to deliver it to the graduating class. For a lot of people, this part is a lot more intimidating, especially for those who aren’t used to speaking in front of an audience. Here are some pointers for you: If you’ve created a short graduation speech, you may want to try memorizing it. This helps you focus on your delivery to make it more personable. Don’t speak too fast even when you’re feeling nervous. Try practicing in front of friends and family so you can learn how to consciously slow down your speaking rate. Once in a while, pause during the delivery of your speech. You can either pause to emphasize your point or to give the audience some time to consider what you’ve said. If you want to keep your audience engaged, make eye contact. Don’t feel stressed or stop if you make any mistake. Just continue with your speech.
• Other tips for you Don’t forget to thank everyone who helped you on your journey. If you aren’t part of the graduating class, thank the person who invited you to give the speech. Be as lively and enthusiastic as possible when delivering your speech. If it’s your first time to deliver a speech, practice again and again. Have fun with it! Feeling stressed won’t help.

College Graduation Speech

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Graduation Speech: Complete Guide & Inspiring Graduation Speech Examples

Ready to toss your caps in the air and bid farewell to the hallowed halls of academia? 

Not so fast…There’s one final thing left to learn about: graduation speeches!

Sure, they might seem like just another routine part of commencement, but graduation speeches are much more than just a formality. 

From tear-jerking tales to laugh-out-loud lessons, the best graduation speeches can be vehicles to share wisdom, life lessons, and unforgettable memories. 

Maybe you’re feeling uncertain about how to craft a graduation speech that people actually want to hear… Or wondering what can turn a good one into a great one…Or, simply looking for inspiration on memorable graduation speech examples. 

Read on to explore all of the above and more in this comprehensive guide on graduation speeches. 

• What is a graduation speech?
• What is the purpose of a graduation speech?

What makes a great graduation speech?

• Steps to Write a Student Graduation Speech [7 Steps]
• Inspiring Graduation Speech Examples [8 Examples]

What is a graduation speech? 

First things first: Let’s define what a graduation speech is exactly. 

A graduation speech is more than just a ceremonial tradition —it’s a speech that combines a heartfelt send-off, a final farewell, and a celebration of achievement all rolled into one.

These speeches are typically delivered by a selected speaker, such as a notable figure, a faculty member, or a student representative, at the commencement, or graduation ceremony.

But what exactly is the purpose behind these speeches, and why do we place such importance on them?

A graduation speech serves as a symbolic bridge between the academic journey and the adventures that lie ahead. It’s a chance for speakers to reflect on the accomplishments, challenges, and growth experienced by graduates throughout their academic careers. And most importantly, it’s an opportunity to share some wisdom, inspiration, and encouragement as graduates embark on their next chapter.

What is the purpose of a graduation speech? 

The purpose of a graduation speech varies depending on the context and the goals of the speaker. But generally, it serves several key purposes:

Let’s break it down:

• Celebrate: Graduation is a big deal, right? So, the speech is a way to celebrate all the hard work and sweat equity that graduates have contributed towards their student experience. And its graduation is a huge achievement worth celebrating!
• Inspire and Motivate: Many graduates feel nervous and apprehensive about what comes next after graduation. As happy as they may be to finally be graduating, many students feel a sense of confusion and discouragement about the future. Graduation speeches are meant to motivate and encourage the graduating class as they wrap up their student experience. It’s all about making them feel inspired as they look towards their future.
• Reflect: Remember all those fun times you had in school? Even the monotonous and routine hustle of being in school will become times you can look back on, joke about, and reminisce on for the rest of your life. Graduation speeches offer a chance to look back on the graduating class memories and once-in-a-lifetime experience.
• Bringing Everyone Together: Graduation is a time for friends, family, and teachers to come together and cheer the graduating class on. The speech helps everyone feel connected and proud of what’s been achieved.
• Closure: Graduation speeches offer closure to the academic journey, providing a symbolic farewell and a sense of completion to graduates as they bid farewell to their alma mater. 
• Legacy: Graduation speeches leave a lasting legacy for graduates, offering timeless wisdom, inspiration, and guidance that they can carry with them as they embark on their future endeavors. They serve as a reminder of the values, lessons, and aspirations that define the graduate experience and shape the path forward.

Overall, the purpose of a graduation speech is to leave a lasting impact on the audience, imparting valuable insights, encouragement, and inspiration that resonate long after the ceremony has ended.

Great graduation speeches captivate audiences by weaving together universal themes, inspiring messages, and deep reflection to create a memorable and inspiring experience.

So what makes a graduation speech great ? While every speech is unique in itself, there are some common elements that all great speeches have.

Here are some key elements that contribute to a great graduation speech:

• Authenticity: A great graduation speech is authentic and genuine, reflecting the speaker’s personality, values, and experiences. 
• Personal Touch: Incorporating personal anecdotes, stories, and reflections adds depth and emotional resonance to a graduation speech. Sharing personal experiences allows the speaker to connect with the audience and make the speech more engaging.
• Inspiring Message: A great graduation speech delivers an inspiring and uplifting message that motivates graduates to embrace their potential, pursue their passions, and make a difference in the world. The message should be positive, empowering, and filled with hope for the future.
• Relevance: A great graduation speech is relevant to the occasion and the audience, addressing the unique challenges, triumphs, and experiences shared by graduates. It acknowledges the journey they’ve been on and offers guidance as they embark on the next chapter of their lives.
• Clear Structure: A well-structured graduation speech flows smoothly from one point to the next, with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
• Engaging Delivery: A great graduation speech is delivered with passion, energy, and enthusiasm, capturing the attention and interest of the audience from start to finish. 
• Humor and Wit: Incorporating humor and wit into a graduation speech can lighten the mood, break the ice, and make the speech more enjoyable for the audience. Humorous anecdotes, clever wordplay, and well-timed jokes can add charm to the speech, making it more entertaining.
• Universal Themes: A great graduation speech explores universal truths that resonate with all graduates, regardless of their background or experiences. It touches on timeless values such as perseverance, resilience, gratitude, and the power of human connection, inspiring graduates to embrace these principles as they navigate life’s challenges.

By incorporating these elements into your own graduation speech, you can create memorable, inspiring, and impactful words that leave a lasting impression on everyone in attendance.

Steps to Write a Student Graduation Speech

Feeling overwhelmed at the thought of writing a graduation speech? That’s normal! 

Even for famous and/or notable figures, writing a commencement or graduation speech can be a nerve-wracking experience.

And while writing a commencement speech may seem like a daunting task, breaking it down into basic steps can make the process more manageable and enjoyable.

Here’s a simple guide to help you craft a memorable and inspiring graduation speech:

Step 1: Understand Your Audience

Before you begin writing your speech, take some time to understand your audience. That is, the graduating class, faculty and staff, and family and friends of everyone involved in the ceremony. 

Consider the demographics of the graduates, their interests, experiences, and the significance of the occasion.

Tailoring your speech to resonate with the audience will make it more relatable and impactful.

Step 2: Choose a Theme or Message

Every great speech has a central theme or message that ties everything together. 

Think about what you want to convey to the graduates—whether it’s words of wisdom, encouragement, or reflections on their journey.

Choose a theme that resonates with the occasion and reflects your personal values and experiences.

Step 3: Brainstorm Ideas and Stories

Once you have a theme in mind, brainstorm ideas, stories, and anecdotes that support your message.

Reflect on your own experiences, lessons learned, and moments of inspiration that you can share with the graduates.

Consider incorporating personal stories, quotes, or examples that illustrate your points and make them more memorable.

Step 4: Create an Outline

Organize your ideas into a clear and coherent outline for your speech.

Start with an introduction that grabs the audience’s attention and introduces your theme. Then, outline the main points you want to cover in the body of the speech. Use supporting stories and examples to illustrate each point.

Finally, conclude your speech with powerful closing remarks that reinforces your message and leaves a lasting impression.

Step 5: Write the Speech

With your outline as a guide, start writing your speech , focusing on clarity, conciseness, and authenticity.

Write in a conversational tone, as if you’re speaking directly to the graduates, and use concise language.

Be sure to include transitions between sections to help the speech flow smoothly and keep the audience engaged.

Step 6: Edit and Revise

Once you’ve written a draft of your speech, take time to edit and revise it for clarity, coherence, and impact.

Cut out any unnecessary or repetitive information, and refine your language to make it more concise and compelling.

Pay attention to pacing, tone, and rhythm, and make sure your speech is well-balanced and engaging from start to finish.

Step 7: Practice, Practice, Practice

Finally, practice delivering your speech aloud multiple times to ensure smooth delivery and confident presentation.

Pay attention to your pacing, timing, hand gestures , and body language, and make adjustments as needed. 

Practicing your speech will help you feel more comfortable and confident on the day of the graduation ceremony.

Here are some tips to help you write a memorable speech:

• Share Your Journey: Reflect on your time in school, highlighting challenges you overcame, lessons you learned, and accomplishments you achieved.
• Inspire with Stories: Share inspiring anecdotes or life lessons that have shaped you and can resonate with your peers.
• Express Gratitude: Thank teachers, family, and friends for their support and guidance throughout your academic journey.
• Offer Encouragement: Provide motivation and encouragement to your fellow graduates as they embark on their future endeavors.

By following these basic steps and tips, you can write a graduation speech that is memorable and impactful, leaving a lasting impression on graduates and audience members for years to come.

8 Inspiring Graduation Speech Examples

If you’re looking to get inspired or need some examples to work from, check out some of the most memorable graduation speeches delivered by today’s notable figures. 

These speeches showcase how some of the world’s most influential people have delivered impactful messages of change, hard work, success, and life lessons to graduating classes throughout the years.

By incorporating personal stories, motivational quotes, and heartfelt advice, these examples showcase the profound impact a well-crafted speech can have on any audience.

While we’ve only featured eight graduation speech examples here, please note that there are countless other inspiring speeches that you can learn from throughout history. A quick online search will help guide you in the direction of more examples if you don’t find what you’re looking for in this list. 

#1 – Steve Jobs’ Stanford University Graduation Speech (2005)

Jobs’s speech is a classic for a reason. He challenged graduates to “stay hungry, stay foolish,” and to never lose sight of their dreams. 

#2 – Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard University Graduation Speech (2013)

Oprah Winfrey reflects on her own journey to success, emphasizing the importance of finding purpose, serving others, and remaining true to oneself in the face of adversity.

#3 –  Chadwick Boseman’s Howard University Graduation Speech (2018)

The late Chadwick Boseman, shortly before his passing, delivered an inspiring speech about the power of purpose and never giving up on your dreams.

#4 – J.K. Rowling’s Harvard University Graduation Speech (2008)

J.K. Rowling shares insights on the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination, empathy, and resilience in overcoming life’s challenges and achieving success.

#5 – Michelle Obama’s CCNY Graduation Speech (2016)

Michelle Obama reflects on the power of education and the importance of resilience, determination, and hope in overcoming obstacles and achieving one’s dreams.

#6 – David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College Graduation Speech (2005)

David Foster Wallace’s speech, titled “This is Water,” is a profound meditation on mindfulness and empathy. Wallace delivers a thought-provoking speech about the value of mindfulness, empathy, and perspective in leading a meaningful and fulfilling life.

#7 – Satya Nadella’s University of Chicago Graduation Speech (2018)

The CEO of Microsoft spoke about the future of technology and the need for human-centered innovation. Nadella shares insights on the role of empathy, curiosity, and continuous learning in driving innovation and success in today’s rapidly changing world.

#8 – Ken Burns’ Stanford University Graduation Speech (2016)

The documentarian urged graduates to be curious, to challenge themselves, and to fight for what they believe in.

Learn From Graduation Speech Examples From Notable Figures

As we’ve seen from speeches like the ones listed above, throughout history, famous individuals have delivered impactful speeches that resonate with audiences and offer valuable lessons for graduates.

So how do these notable figures inspire through their speeches?

• Emphasizing Change: Notable figures often highlight the importance of embracing change and adapting to new beginnings in their speeches.
• Hard Work and Success: Through personal anecdotes, they stress the significance of hard work and determination in achieving success.
• Life Lessons: Graduation speeches by renowned figures are filled with insightful life lessons that guide and motivate graduates on their journey ahead.
• Words of Encouragement: Notable graduation speeches give encouragement, confidence, and hope to the audience as they move ahead.

Throughout this guide, we’ve explored how these speeches are more than just a routine part of commencement—they’re opportunities to share wisdom, life lessons, and unforgettable memories.

Whether you were feeling uncertain about crafting a speech that resonates or curious about the secrets behind turning a good speech into a great one, we’ve covered it all.

As you step onto the stage to deliver your graduation speech, remember the power you hold. Inspire, uplift, and connect us all! 

Here’s to making your mark and leaving a lasting impression as you embark on the next chapter of your journey!

Whether you’re giving a graduation speech or a TEDx talk, this free guide will help expand your reach.

Check out more great articles from the Thought-Leader Blog covering TEDx Talks, success mindsets, and everything else in between

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How to Write and Deliver a Memorable Graduation Speech: Tips, Examples, and Techniques

• The Speaker Lab
• March 7, 2024

Table of Contents

The goal of any graduation speech is to find words that capture the essence of years spent learning and growing. Today, we’ll guide you through that process and help you craft a memorable graduation speech . You’ll learn to weave gratitude with shared experiences, and balance humor with wisdom. We’ll even help you find quotes that strike a chord and deliver them in a way that resonates.

But that’s not all! Dive into proven strategies for public speaking, managing stage fright, and drawing inspiration from iconic commencement speeches. Discover how personal growth stories add depth to your message and explore themes that leave a lasting impact on your peers as they step forward into new beginnings.

Crafting Your Graduation Speech: A Step-by-Step Guide

When it comes to marking the end of your high school or university journey, a graduation speech can capture the essence of this pivotal moment. But how do you start such an important address?

Opening with Impact

The first words of your graduation speech are crucial. They set the stage for what’s to come and grab your audience’s attention. Think about starting strong by sharing a personal anecdote that ties into the broader experience of your class or drawing from Steve Jobs’ Stanford University commencement speech , where he began with, “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.” This technique instantly piques interest because it promises narratives that have shaped who you are.

An impactful opening also acknowledges shared experiences. Perhaps you could reflect on how moments in classrooms turned strangers into lifelong friends. Or for university commencements, consider touching upon those late-night study sessions that tested perseverance but ultimately led to academic achievements worth celebrating today.

Building the Body of Your Graduation Speech

In crafting the body content, intertwine lessons learned throughout high school years or during university courses with aspirations for what lies ahead. For instance, share how overcoming obstacles like balancing extracurricular activities and academics taught valuable time management skills.

To add depth, incorporate quotes from luminaries like Oprah Winfrey or draw parallels between classroom learnings and real-world applications. Dive deeper by discussing milestones achieved together as a graduating class and recognizing the hard work everyone put in to make it to this monumental occasion.

Concluding with Inspiration

Your conclusion should leave fellow graduates feeling inspired while helping them celebrate high school memories one last time—or honor those unforgettable college years if addressing higher education grads.

Closing remarks could include heartfelt gratitude towards teachers’ support and parental guidance. You might even crack a joke or two. It’s these personalized touches paired with universal truths that resonate most deeply as students step forward into new chapters post-graduation.

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Delivery Techniques for Confident Speaking

Standing in front of a crowd can turn even the most composed student into a bundle of nerves. But fear not, with some smart strategies, you’ll be able to channel your inner orator and deliver your graduation speech with confidence.

Practicing Your Graduation Speech

Becoming familiar with every word of your speech is key. Rehearse it out loud until the words feel like second nature. This practice does more than just help you remember what comes next; it lets you find the natural rhythm and pace of your delivery. Consider recording yourself to catch any quirks or stumbling blocks—you might be surprised at how much this helps refine your presentation.

A trick often overlooked is practicing in different environments. If possible, stand on the actual stage where you will deliver your commencement address. Familiarity breeds comfort, making that once daunting podium seem like an old friend when graduation day arrives.

Overcoming Nervousness and Stage Fright

Nervousness is normal but doesn’t let it dictate your performance. Before stepping up to speak, take deep breaths to steady yourself—a calm body encourages a calm mind. An effective method for easing anxiety is visualization. Imagine delivering each line perfectly and receiving an enthusiastic response from listeners—envisioning success can make it so.

Maintaining Eye Contact

The power of eye contact cannot be overstated. It connects speaker and listener on a personal level that amplifies engagement significantly. Scan across different sections of the audience periodically without lingering too long on any one individual.

Incorporate these techniques diligently when preparing for the big day. In doing so, they become part of muscle memory and help build confidence. With confidence and plenty of practice on your side, your graduation speech is sure to conclude to applause leaving you to celebrate yet another milestone achieved.

Analyzing Renowned Graduation Speeches for Inspiration

When crafting a commencement speech , it’s often helpful to look at the giants whose words have echoed through auditoriums and across campuses. Steve Jobs’ Stanford University Commencement Speech is a classic example of weaving life lessons into an address that connects deeply with graduates. Similarly, Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard University Commencement Address showed how stumbling blocks can become stepping stones if we learn from them.

Steve Jobs’ Storytelling Mastery

Jobs had a knack for turning personal anecdotes into universal truths. In his Stanford address, he shared three stories from his own life without sounding self-indulgent. These stories worked because each one carried a broader message relevant to every graduate: finding what you love, dealing with loss, and facing death head-on. Jobs famously urged students to “stay hungry, stay foolish,” encouraging them not just to pursue success but remain curious about life despite challenges. This advice is especially poignant for today’s graduating class.

Like Jobs, you too can craft narratives around moments that speak volumes about perseverance and passion.

Oprah’s Unflinching Honesty

Much like her television persona suggests, Oprah did not shy away from discussing her setbacks in front of Harvard’s graduating class. Instead, she confidently laid bare the challenges faced by anyone who dares greatly because failure is part of achieving greatness. As she reminded students, “It doesn’t matter how far you might rise… At some point you are bound to stumble.”

In doing so she forged an instant connection with listeners grappling with their fears about what the future holds post-graduation. It was a powerful reminder that even icons like Oprah are not immune to trials but emerge stronger through them.

The power behind these speeches lies not just in their content but also in their delivery. These speakers mastered the art of speaking confidently before crowds, maintaining eye contact, and conveying authenticity—techniques any speaker should aspire to replicate on graduation day.

Themes and Messages That Resonate with Graduates

Facing a sea of caps and gowns, the right words can turn a graduation ceremony from mundane to memorable. When crafting your commencement speech, focusing on themes like overcoming obstacles and perseverance connects deeply with graduates who have hurdled high school or college challenges.

Overcoming Obstacles

Talking about stumbling blocks is not just relatable; it’s inspirational. Think Steve Jobs at Stanford University or Oprah Winfrey at Harvard—both shared personal tales of setbacks turned into comebacks. Beyond simply telling their stories, they showed how those hurdles were stepping stones to success.

Weave your narrative around the potholes you’ve navigated during your high school years. This doesn’t mean airing every bit of dirty laundry, just highlighting that one significant moment where everything seemed against you yet failed to defeat you.

The Power of Perseverance

Perseverance is more than sticking to something—it’s pushing forward when every fiber wants to quit. It resonates because everyone, including your fellow graduates, has felt that urge to give up but chose to persevere instead.

Incorporate this theme by using vivid examples that mirror collective experiences—the all-nighters before exams or balancing sports stars ambitions with academics—to illustrate perseverance isn’t just an idea but lived reality for many students.

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Life Lessons Shared During Graduation Speeches

In addition to sharing content that fellow graduates will find relatable and inspirational, you should also consider sharing life lessons with your audience. Whether young or old, everyone has a unique perspective on life and sharing your wisdom can steer graduates toward a fulfilling path.

The Power of Kindness

Making a positive impact doesn’t require grand gestures; sometimes it’s found in small acts of kindness or an innovative idea that simplifies lives. This message sticks because everyone wants their work to mean something—to know they’ve left footprints on society’s vast canvas.

True Grit and Tenacity

Embracing failure and resilience is another powerful theme echoed by commencement speakers across podiums. Let’s face it; not all endeavors lead straight to success. But as Oprah Winfrey once said during her Harvard University commencement address, “It doesn’t matter how far you might rise… At some point, you are bound to stumble.” Her words remind us: How we pick ourselves up matters more than how we fall.

Making a Positive Impact

A graduating class stands poised on tomorrow’s threshold ready to mold history—and speeches should fuel this transformative fire within them. Memorable graduation speeches show individuals that ovation-worthy achievements are possible if you believe your actions count.

As you prepare your graduation speech, consider including one of these life lessons or one of your own. Don’t be afraid to share your hard-won insights to your fellow graduates—you just might inspire them to make history.

Celebrating Achievements and Acknowledging Contributions

Graduation is not just a ceremony. It’s a tribute to the academic achievements and extracurricular activities that have shaped students into who they are. The acknowledgment of teacher support and parental guidance also plays a pivotal role in these speeches, as they’re the scaffolding upon which student successes are built.

Academic Achievements, Extracurricular Activities

Acknowledging academic prowess goes beyond GPA scores or honor societies; it’s about highlighting unique intellectual journeys. Similarly, shining a light on extracurricular triumphs—be it sports stars setting records or artists winning competitions—adds depth to your speech. Remembering these moments isn’t merely recounting victories but celebrating the relentless spirit of your fellow graduates.

Diving deeper into personal anecdotes helps you connect with peers by reminding them of their growth through challenges faced together—from late-night study sessions to championship games. It’s these stories that make graduation memories stick with classmates long after commencement ends.

Teacher Support, Parental Guidance

The unsung heroes behind every graduate deserve their moment in your address too. Teachers’ dedication can turn classrooms into launch pads for dreams, while parents’ unwavering belief often fuels aspirations during tumultuous times like the pandemic.

In weaving tales of mentorship from teachers or wisdom imparted by parents, you remind everyone that success is rarely a solo act—it’s supported by many hands and hearts along the way. Celebrate this collective effort because each person has contributed uniquely to shaping graduating classes across America, including yours.

Common Issues in Writing and Delivering Graduation Speeches

Staring at a blank page as the clock ticks down to graduation day can rattle even the most seasoned speech writers. Overcoming writer’s block is about finding your message stick—the core idea that you want to leave with your peers. Remember, this isn’t just any talk; it’s one that marks a significant transition for both you and your audience.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

Finding yourself stumped on how to write a speech ? Don’t sweat it. Start by jotting down memories from school years or powerful life lessons that resonate. Think of Steve Jobs’ Stanford University commencement speech where he shared personal stories, which became an inspirational backbone for many other speeches.

If inspiration doesn’t strike immediately, step away from the computer. Take a walk and reflect on high school experiences or browse through commencement speeches archives—like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s address at the University of Pennsylvania. They might spark ideas you hadn’t considered yet.

Navigating Technical Troubles

A great speech can stumble over technical hiccups. To avoid glitches, check all equipment beforehand—a simple but crucial task often overlooked due to nerves or excitement about graduating class celebrations.

Prior rehearsals will also let you handle these issues like a pro should they pop up during delivery. Make sure any videos or slides complement rather than overshadow what you’re saying. After all, graduates aren’t there for bells and whistles—they’re there for meaningful words.

Handling Stage Fright

Your knees may shake thinking delivering in front of proud parents and peers—it’s no small feat, after all. Before you step on stage, visual your success until it feels more real and attainable.

And don’t forget to watch your body language. During your speech, maintain eye contact—not stare-downs—to connect genuinely with fellow students. And if anxiety creeps up despite practice sessions? Take deep breaths to steady yourself and keep going. You’ve handled high school—you can handle this.

FAQs on Writing and Delivering a Graduation Speech

What do i say in my graduation speech.

Share heartfelt stories, acknowledge support from others, and inspire your classmates to chase their dreams boldly.

How do you write a 3 minute graduation speech?

Keep it tight: hit the high notes with gratitude, shared memories, a dash of humor, and wrap up with punchy inspiration.

How do I start a graduation speech?

Kick off with thanks. Give props to family and mentors. Set the stage for reflecting on past adventures together.

What is the most important message of a graduation speech?

The core should spark hope—urge peers to leap into tomorrow equipped with lessons learned during these formative years.

Master your moment with a graduation speech that turns heads and warms hearts. Remember the power of gratitude and connect with your audience through stories, those shared adventures that bind you to your classmates. Don’t be afraid to add a few jokes and quotes to your speech either, as well as personal growth stories to inspire.

When you hit the stage, stand tall, make eye contact, and speak from your heart—the podium’s yours. If butterflies invade, breathe deep and know everyone’s rooting for you. Writer’s block didn’t stop you and neither will this.

Your graduation speech is not just words—it’s a battle cry for your graduating class as you prepare to conquer what lies ahead!

• Last Updated: March 5, 2024

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24 Graduation Speeches: Speeches You Give in Pointy Hats

Graduation is a big day for graduates, their families, and teachers. If you are called to give a graduation speech, you want to make it special.  I want to share with you what makes a good graduation speech and give you tips on how to write one that will make an impact.

As we begin, you need to wrap your mind around two main things:

• Most people do not remember the graduation speeches they hear, but they do remember the feeling they got in the moment–inspired, bored, challenged.
• The more you tap into shared memories, the more meaningful the speech will be for those listening.

There are two main types of graduation speakers, the student speaker, and the headline speaker. At one college at our university, there is a speech contest to be the graduation speaker and at another college, it is someone who has been nominated by a faculty member. How you get there varies from place to place At the local high school, the valedictorian is often the speaker. I recently went to high school graduation and they had seven valedictorians so they had seven speakers–yes, it was as long as you can imagine.

When thinking about giving a graduation speech, you have to ask, “What does the audience need from me?” They need you to reflect on the past, celebrate the present, and focus on the future. This chapter will walk you through the essentials of giving a graduation speech and then give you several example speeches as samples of key elements.

Gather the Details

• How long will you speak?
• Who will be in attendance?
• Who will introduce you?
• Are you the only speaker?
• Will there be a microphone?
• Can you use speech notes?
• Brainstorm with Friends

This is the fun part. Sit down with friends and make a list of all the things that come to mind about the college experience. When brainstorming, write down everything you think of and don’t try to judge whether it should be included, just go with it.  There is an entire chapter on how to brainstorm here. 

• Food, dining halls, local restaurants
• Hangouts on campus
• Social events
• Notable classes
• Significant memories
• Current events
• Shared college experiences (on our campus it might be buying scantrons, hearing the bells of Old Main, and using Blackboard.

Organizational Format

Most all student graduation speeches include the past, present, and future format.

• Present: Opening statement and the thank you.
• Past: The shared memory.
• Future: The challenge and a closing statement.

Manuscript Format

Most student graduation speeches are in manuscript format. That helps you from getting overwhelmed at the moment and that also gives the school a chance to censor– I mean to approve of–your content. There is an entire chapter on writing a manuscript that you can refer to here. 

Pick a Theme

Many graduation speeches use a theme. Here are some of the most common graduation themes.

It can be helpful to pick a theme and connect a metaphor to your theme. There is an entire chapter on how to do that here. 

“There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to push you in another direction.” Oprah Winfrey, Harvard University Commencement Speech

Start Your Speech with an Introduction

Most introductions acknowledge the occasion, offer thanks, and lead into the main idea. Shutterfly suggests these as openings.

• “Thank you [person who introduced you]. And thank you to the students, teachers, parents, and staff who made these four years everything that they were.”
• “It’s my honor today to deliver the commencement address for this incredible student body.”
• “It is my pleasure to welcome students, families, and faculty to graduation day at [school’s name]. Every one of you has made an impact on the graduates who sit here today.”
• “I stand here before you, looking back on four years of legacy we’ve all made together.”

Use the Principles of Good Ceremonial Speaking

I have written a chapter on each component of ceremonial speaking and you can reference those you need:

• Tell a story
• Use identification, narration, and magnification
• Use colorful language
• Use metaphor, simile,  and theme
• Put your speech in manuscript format

Look for Stories that Celebrate Common Experiences

Notice how Jaclyn Marston reflects on specific classes and memories. (Watch starting at .54 seconds).

Watch how Lin Manuel Miranda references the familiar and the obscure in his address to the University of Pennsylvania (start watching at 1:12).

Use a Theme

Notice how she uses the theme–“What do you want to be” when you grow up and alters it to  “What do you want to do?” She opens with this and wraps back around to this same idea at the end.

Be Vulnerable

Notice how this speaker admits his shortcomings. We feel like he is honest and vulnerable so we hang on his everyword.

Headline Speaker Sample Speeches

Headline speakers are usually someone famous or notable. Speeches by those individuals almost always include stories and challenges. I have included several here. Pick two of them to analyze.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. Steve Jobs

These highlights of Lou Holtz’s graduation speech is full of great challenges and life lessons.

Tim Minchin

“One: Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you. You never know where you might end up.

Two: Don’t seek happiness. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy and you might find you get some as a side effect.

Three:  Understanding that you can’t truly take credit for your successes nor truly blame others for their failures will humble you and make you more compassionate.

Four: Exercise. Take care of your body: you’re going to need it.

Five: Be hard on your opinions. Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privileges.

Six: Even if you’re not a teacher, be a teacher. Share your ideas. Don’t take for granted your education.

Seven: Define yourself by what you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank you cards and give standing ovations. Be pro stuff not just anti stuff.

Eight: Respect people with less power than you.

Nine: Finally, don’t rush. You don’t need to know what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.”

As you can see, graduation speeches can be serious or lighthearted; they can be personal, motivational, and informative. The key thing is that the speech should be authentic. It should be as unique as the speaker.

Key Takeaways

Remember This!

• Graduation speeches should reflect on the past, celebrate the present, and inspire towards the future.
• Consider the needs of the audience and find commonalities.
• Tell a story.
• Use a manuscript.

Bonus Features

Jaclyn Marson describes the process of how she wrote her Graduation Speech.

Dunham, A. (2019). Valedictorian comes out as autistic during speech. [Video] YouTube.  https://youtu.be/GtPGrLoU5Uk Standard YouTube License

Holtz, L. (2017). Lou Holtz’s inspirational speech. Commencement speech.[Video] YouTube.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3LOo_Ccyws Standard YouTube License

Jobs, S. (2008). Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. [Video] YouTube.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc Standard YouTube License.

Jostens, (n.d.).  Celebrate high school memories. Inspire your grad community. https://www.jostens.com/resources/students-and-parents/graduation-guides/how-to-write-a-grad-speech

Marson, J. (2020). How to write an amazing graduation speech–Jaclyn Marson podcast Ep 1. [Video] YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5CUSzp9SrM Standard YouTube License.

Marston, J. (2016). Beautiful and moving graduation speech 2016. [Video] YouTube.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F3K3Z_5CEE Standard YouTube License.

Minchin, T. (2013). 9 life lessons-Time Minchin UWA Address. [Video] YouTube.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoEezZD71sc Standard YouTube License.

Rosen, L. (2019). Leah Rosen: “The power of this place,” Duke University 2019 commencement student speaker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4N Standard YouTube License.

Shutterfly. (n.d) How to start a graduation speech. https://www.shutterfly.com/ideas/graduation-speech/

Stewart, M.  (2020). Student speaker. Commencement 2020. University of Utah. [Video] YouTube.   h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZFJnZvuQIo Standard YouTube License.

University of Pennsylvania. (2016). Penn’s 2016 commencement ceremony- Commencement speaker Lin-Manuel Miranda. [Video] YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewHcsFlolz4&t=0s Standard YouTube License.

Media Attributions

• Graduation Photo © Lynn Meade is licensed under a CC BY (Attribution) license

Advanced Public Speaking Copyright © 2021 by Lynn Meade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Graduation Speech (Graduation Speech Examples)

Have you been asked to deliver a commencement speech? Or have you worked your butt off to become valedictorian or salutatorian, and now you have to deliver a graduation speech? In this post, we will cover one of the more challenging types of presentation creation: How to Write a Graduation Speech . (By the way, I have also included a few popular graduation speech examples as a guide for you.)

This post is a continuation of our How to Create a Presentation series. We are going to break this post down into three parts, though. We will show you how to create a commencement speech in this post. Next week, I’ll show you how to write a valedictorian speech and how to deliver a salutatorian speech. Each of these graduation speeches has a slightly different purpose, but all of them need to be inspirational and funny.

How to Write a Commencement Speech

The commencement speech is often the keynote speech of the graduation ceremony. This presentation should be uplifting and entertaining, but this graduation speech should also teach a life lesson to the graduating students. If you do a search on YouTube of the best graduation speeches, many of these speakers will be famous comedians. When a comedian delivers a commencement speech, and the speech is posted on YouTube, it will always get a ton of views. The humor alone will make people want to watch the video. Three of the most popular of these speeches are by Conan O’Brien, Will Ferrell, and Ellen DeGeneres. The interesting thing about the speeches from these famous comedians is that, yes, they are funny, but the inspiration comes from what they learned from their failures.

“There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life life trying to push you in another direction.” Oprah Winfrey, Harvard University Commencement Speech

A Good Structure When You Write a Commencement Address

Thank the crowd.

Start with Something Funny

Be Inspirational

The inspirational part of your commencement speech will come from the theme of the graduation speech . (For Sample Graduation Speech Themes , see the section below.) The easiest way to develop a theme is to look for an inspirational famous quote about success. You can do this by just going to Google and type in “success quotes”. Once you come up with a great quote, you can either paraphrase the quote and make it your own or quote the original speaker.

Tell Stories from Your Own Experience Related to Your Quote (Theme).

This the most important part of how to write a graduation speech. The stories and examples are what the audience will remember. These stories add emotion and inspiration to your graduation speech. They also help you build rapport with the audience. Finally, these stories make your delivery much easier. You don’t have to memorize a lot of material. Instead, just play the video in your head of what happened and describe the incident to the graduates.

For a great example of this, watch the YouTube video on Stanford University’s channel where Steve Jobs gives the commencement speech. I love this speech, because Jobs skips the introduction and the funny stuff and starts his speech with the following. “I’m going to tell you three stories.” It’s simple, and the crowd loves him.

End with an Inspirational Call to Action.

So as you go on to the next stage in your life and you experience failure… because you will experience failure, use that as a stepping stone to your next success. Persevere. Don’t rest on that success. Use it as a stepping stone to your next success. Persevere, and you will experience a series of successes and failures that will allow you to accomplish something great!”

Use this outline to create a simple 20 to 30 minute speech. (The shorter the better… No one gets a diploma until you finish.)

Sample Graduation Speech Themes

If you are having trouble coming up with a theme for your graduation speech, here are a few Sample Commencement Speech Themes. As you read through them, think about which them or quote has been most applicable in your career? Once you choose a graduation speech them, use the outline above to create your speech.

• Hard Work Leads to Success

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” — Coleman Cox

• Create Your Own Path.

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” — Herman Melville

• Make Things Happen.

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau

• Don’t Settle for Average. Strive for Greatness.

“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” –John D. Rockefeller

• Don’t Wait for the Perfect Opportunity. Look for a Way to Create Your Own Opportunity.

“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser/blockquote> The Road Ahead is Hard, But It Leads to Success. “Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.” — Jim Rohn

• Focus on Your Dream.

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee

• Learn from Every Mistake to Move Toward Success.

“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” — Conrad Hilton

• When Your Why is Big Enough, Your How Will Appear.

“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” — Jim Rohn

• Happiness is the Key to Success.

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer

Use the Speech Creator as a Guide to How to Create a Graduation Speech

Once you have chosen a them, and you have a few stories to inspire your audience, use our Online Speech Writer to help you organize your thoughts. (It’s free.)

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“My philosophy is very simple. When you see something that’s not right, not fair, not just, stand up, say something, and speak out.”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis

2018 The Civil Rights icon delivers a powerful message on the importance of truth, justice, and equality at a time when those values have come under assault.

Thank you so much for those kind words of introduction. I must tell you that I’m delighted, very pleased and really happy to be here. You look good! The weather is good, rain stayed away. I’m happy. It’s good to see each and every one of you. Fellows of Harvard University, members of the Board of Overseers, members of the alumni board, distinguished deans, guests, faculty and all of the students, all of the wonderful graduates, and madam president, thank you. Thank you for your leadership, thank you for getting in good trouble! Necessary trouble. To lead this great University.

I want to take just a moment to honor the tenure of a great leader, who, through her courage and vision, worked to lead this historic university to even higher heights. Madam president, thank you for being a friend, but more importantly, thank you for using your office to move Harvard toward a more all-inclusive institution. Somewhere along the way, you realized that the brilliant mind is not confined to one discipline or one way of thinking.

In fact, true genius sees connections and relationships across barriers, to build a new understanding of the world around us. Creating one Harvard is much like the work I dedicated my life to. Ever since as a young girl you wrote a letter to President Eisenhower as a little girl, you have been responding to the cry for human dignity that rings out in our world. You used your vision and your talent, you used the great resources of this university to respond to that call, and I thank you. Thank you for your contribution to human unity in our world.

Today I say to each and every one of you who graduated from this University, you must lead. You’re never too young to lead, you’re never too old to lead! We need your leadership now more than ever before. We need it! We must save our country! We must save it! We must save our democracy. There are forces in America today and around the world trying to take us to some other place. Our foremothers and forefathers brought us to this place. Maybe our foremothers and our forefathers all came to this great land in different ships but as the late great A. Philip Randolph said “we are all in the same boat now” and we must look out for each other and care for each other. You’re never too young or too old to lead! To speak up! Speak out! And get in good trouble, necessary trouble. You cannot afford to stand on the sidelines.

Another generation of young people and people not so young are inspired to get in the way. Students from Harvard, Dr. Cole, who I have been knowing for many years came to Mississippi, came to the South and gave everything you had. During the 63 young men that I knew, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwermer, and James Chaney gave their very lives while they were helping people to register to vote. The vote is precious. It’s almost sacred. It is the most powerful, nonviolent instrument or tool we have in a democratic society and we must use t if we fail to use it, we will lose it.

So during this election year, I urge you, I plead with you to do what you can to save and rescue America. To do what you can to save the planet! Save this spaceship we call earth and leave it a little cleaner, a little greener, and a little more peaceful. For generations yet unborn. We have a mission and a mandate to go out there, play a role and play it so well as Dr. King would say, that no one else can play it any better. Some of you have heard me say from time to time that I grew up in rural Alabama on a farm, picking cotton, gathering peanuts, gathering corn. Sometimes I would be out there working and my mother would say, “boy, you’re falling behind! You need to catch up.” And I would say “this is hard work.” And she said “hard work never killed anybody.” And I said “well it’s about to kill me!” We need to work hard! There is work to be done. These smart graduates will lead us. High school students lead us, and guys, I say to you, if you’re not mindful, the women are going to lead us! It is my belief, it is my feeling as a traveler of America that the women and young. People, high school students, elementary school students and College students will lead us as part of a nonviolent revolution. We will create an America that is better, a little more humane and no one, but no one can deny us of that.

I just want to say one or two words to the graduates. Take a deep breath and take it all in. But tomorrow, I hope you roll up your sleeves, because the world is waiting for talented men and women to lead it to a better place. During the 60s, people literally put their bodies on the line! Many came from this University, came from Cambridge, from Boston, throughout the state and throughout America. Just think a few short years ago that Black people and white people couldn’t be seated together on a Greyhound business or trailway bus, leaving Washington, D.C., to travel through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. We were on our way to New Orleans to test a decision of the United States Supreme Court. We were beaten, arrested, and more than 400 of us were jailed. My seatmate was a young white gentleman from Connecticut. We arrived in a small town in South Carolina. We were beaten, left bloody. But many years later, and this was May 1961, same year that Barack Obama was born, but many years later, one of the guys that beat us came to my office in Washington. He got information from a local reporter. He was in his 70s, his son came with him in his 40s. He said, “Mr. Lewis, I’m one of the people that beat you. Beat your seatmate. I’ve been a member of the Klan.” He said “will you forgive me? I want to apologize. Will you accept my apology? Will you forgive me?” His son started crying, he started crying and I said, “I forgive you. I accept your apology.” They hugged me, I hugged them back, and I cried with them. It is the power of the way of peace, the power of love, it is the power of the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. We need to create a society where we can be reconciled and lay down the burden of hath for hate is too heavy of a burden to bear.

Fifty years ago the man that I admired, the man that was like a brother, Martin Luther King Jr., was taken from us. When we heard that Dr. King had been assassinated I was in Indianapolis, Indiana, campaigning with Bobby Kennedy. I cried. Stopped crying and I said to myself “we still have bobby.” Two months later Bobby Kennedy was gone. And I cried some more. Today we’ve got to get rid of our are tears and not be down. And not get lost in the sea of despair. We’ve got to be hopeful and keep the faith and turn the ship around. We can do it and we must do it!

Here at Harvard you’ve been well trained. You must lead. You must get out there and as Dr. King would say, be a headlight, not a taillight! It’s your time, it’s your calling. During the 60s I got arrested a few times, 40 times! And since I’ve been in Congress another five times! And I’m probably going to get arrested again! My philosophy is very simple, when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, stand up! Say something! Speak up and speak out!

When I was growing up as a young boy in rural Alabama, 50 miles from Montgomery, I had an aunt by the name of Seneva and my aunt lived in a shotgun house. Here at Harvard you never seen a shotgun house, you don’t even know what I’m talking about. One way in, one way out. What is a shotgun house? Old house, dirt yard. Sometimes my aunt Seneva would go out on the weekend, Friday or Saturday, and take a brush broom made from dogwood branches and sweep the yard very clean. One Saturday afternoon few of my brothers and sisters, cousins, about 15 of us young children were playing in her dirt yard. And an unbelievable storm came up. The wind started blowing, the thunder started rolling and the lightning started flashing and she told us to come in. We went in. The wind continued to blow, the thunder continued to roll, the lightning continued to flash, and the rain continued to beat on this old tin roof of the shotgun house. And we cried and cried. And in one corner of the old house appeared to be lifting up. And my aunt walked over to that side to hold the house down with her body. When the other corner appeared to be lifting she had us walk to that corner, we were children walking with the wind, but we never, ever left the house! I say to each of you, each and every one of us, the wind may blow, the thunder may roll, the lightning may flash, and the rain may beat down on an old house. Call it a house of Harvard, call it a house of Cambridge, call it a house of Boston, call it the house of Washington, or Alabama or Georgia, we all live in the same house. We all must hold our little house down. So I say to you: Walk with the wind. Let the spirit of history be your guide.

Thank you very much.

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

J.K. Rowling

2008 Drawing from her own life story, the “Harry Potter” author urges graduates not to fear failure but to learn from it and emphasized the power of empathy and imagination.

Read the speech.

“If we break down the walls that hem us in, if we step out into the open and have the courage to embrace new beginnings, everything is possible.”

Angela Merkel

2019 Like the Berlin Wall, “anything that seems set in stone or inalterable can indeed change,” Germany’s first woman chancellor said.

Herman Hesse wrote, “In all beginnings dwells a magic force for guarding us and helping us to live.” These words by Herman Hesse inspired me when I completed my physics degree at the age of 24. That was back in 1978. The world was divided into east and west, and it was in the grips of the Cold War. I grew up in East Germany, in the GDR, the part of my country which was not free at that time, in a dictatorship. People were oppressed and under state surveillance. Political dissidents were persecuted. The East German government was afraid that the people would flee to freedom. And that’s why it built the Berlin Wall, a wall made of concrete and steel. Anyone caught trying to overcome it was arrested or shot dead. This wall, which cut Berlin in half, divided a people and it divided families. My family was also divided.My first job after college was as a physicist at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. I lived near the Berlin Wall. I walked towards it every day on my way home from my institute. Behind it lay West Berlin, freedom. And every day, when I was very close to the wall, I had to turn away at the last minute in order to head towards my apartment. Every day, I had to turn away from freedom at the last minute. I don’t know how often I thought that I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was so frustrating.

Now, I was not a dissident. I didn’t run up and bang against the wall. Nor, however, did I deny its existence, for I didn’t want to lie to myself. The Berlin Wall limited my opportunities. It quite literally stood in my way. However, there was one thing which this wall couldn’t do during all those years. It couldn’t impose limits on my inner thoughts. My personality, my imagination, my dreams and desires, prohibitions or coercion couldn’t limit any of that. Then came 1989. A common desire for freedom unleashed incredible forces throughout Europe. In Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, as well as in East Germany, hundreds of thousands of people dared to take to the streets. The people demonstrated and brought down the wall. Something which many people, including myself, would not have believed possible became reality. Where there was once only a dark wall, a door suddenly opened. For me, too, the moment had come to walk through that door. I no longer had to turn away from freedom at the last minute. I was able to cross this border and venture out into the great wide open.

During these months, 30 years ago, I experienced firsthand that nothing has to stay the way it is. This experience, dear graduates, is the first thought I want to share with you today for your future. Anything that seems to be set in stone or inalterable can, indeed, change. In matters both large and small, it holds true that every change begins in the mind. My parents’ generation discovered this in a most painful way. My father and mother were born in 1926 and 1928.

When they weren’t as old as most of you here today, the betrayal of all civilized well values that was the Shoah and World War II had just ended. My country, Germany, had brought unimaginable suffering on Europe and the world. The victors and the defeated could easily have remained irreconcilable for many years, but instead, Europe overcame centuries old conflicts. A peaceful order based on common values rather than suppose at national strength emerged. Despite all the discussions and temporary setbacks, I firmly believe that we Europeans have United for the better. And the relationship between Germans and Americans, too, demonstrates how former wartime enemies can become friends.

It was George Marshall who gave a crucial contribution to this for the plan he announced at the commencement ceremonies in 1947 in this very place. The transatlantic partnership based on values, such as democracy and human rights, has given us an era of peace and prosperity of benefit to all sides, which has lasted for more than 70 years now. And today, it will not be long now before the politicians of my generation are no longer the subject of the exercising leadership program, and at most will be dealt with in leadership in history. Harvard class of 2019, your generation will be faced with the challenges of the 21st century in the coming decades. You are among those who will lead us into the future.

Protectionism and trade conflicts, jeopardize free international trade, and thus the very foundations of our prosperity. The digital transformation affects all facets of our lives, wars and terrorism lead to displacement and forced migration, climate change poses a threat to our planet’s natural resources, it and the resulting crises are caused by humans. Therefore, we can and must do everything humanly possible to truly master this challenge to humankind. It’s still possible. However, each and every one of us must play our part. And I say this with a measure of self criticism, get better. I will therefore do everything in my power to ensure that Germany, my country, will achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Changes for the better are possible if we tackle them together. If we were to go it alone, we could not achieve much. The second thought I want to share with you is therefore, more than ever our way of thinking and our actions have to be multilateral rather than unilateral, global rather than national, outward looking rather than isolationists. In short, we have to work together rather than alone.

You, dear graduates, will have quite different opportunities to do this in future than my generation did. After all, your smartphone probably has considerably more processing power than the copy of an IBM mainframe computer manufactured in the Soviet Union, which I was allowed to use for my dissertation in East Germany in 1986.

Today we use artificial intelligence, for example, to search through millions of images for symptoms of diseases.In order, among other things, to better diagnose cancer. In future, empathetic robots could help doctors and nurses to focus on the individual needs of patients. We cannot predict today which applications will be possible. However, the opportunities it brings are truly breathtaking.

Class of 2019, how we use these opportunities will be largely up to you as graduates. You are the ones who will be involved in deciding how our approach to how we work, communicate, get about, indeed, our entire way of life will develop. As federal chancellor, I often have to ask myself, “Am I doing the right thing?” “Am I doing something? Because it isn’t right? Or simply because it is possible.” That is something you two need to keep asking yourselves. And that is the third thought I wish to share with you today.

Are we laying down the rules for technology or is technology dictating how we interact? Do we prioritize people as individuals with their human dignity and all their many facets? Or do we see in them merely consumers, data sources, objects of surveyance. These are difficult questions.

I have learned that we can find good answers even to difficult questions if we always try to view the world through the eyes of others. If we respect other people’s history, traditions, religion, and identity. If we hold fast to our inalienable values and act in accordance with them. And if we don’t always act on our first impulses, even when there is pressure to make a snap decision.

But instead take a moment to stop. Be still. Think. Pause. Granted, that certainly takes courage. Above all it calls for truthfulness in our attitude towards others. And perhaps most importantly, it calls for us to be honest with ourselves.

What better place to begin to do so than here, in this place, where so many young people from all over the world come to learn, research, and discuss the issues of our time under the maxim of truth. That requires us not to describe lies as truth and truth as lies. It requires us not to accept shortcomings as our normality. Yet what, dear graduates, could stop you? What could stop us from doing that?

Once again, the answer is walls.

Walls in people’s minds. Walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They exist between family members, as well as between groups within the society, between people of different skin colors, nations, and religions. I would like us to break down these walls. Walls that keep preventing us from envisioning the world in which, together, we want to live.

Whether we manage to do that is up to us. That’s why my full thought for you, dear graduates, to consider is this. Nothing can be taken for granted. Our individual liberties are not givens. Democracy is not something we can take for granted. Neither is peace and neither is prosperity.

But if we break down… If we break down the walls that hem us in, if we step out into the open and have the courage to embrace new beginnings, everything is possible. Walls can collapse. Dictatorships can disappear. We can halt global warming. We can eradicate starvation. We can eliminate diseases. We can give people, especially girls, access to education. We can fight the causes of displacement and forced migration. We can do all of that. Let’s not start by asking what isn’t possible, or focusing on what has always been that way. Let’s start by asking what is possible and looking for things that have never been done like that before. This is exactly what I said to the Bundestag, the German Parliament, in 2005 in my first policy statement as newly elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the first woman to hold this office. I want to use precisely these words to share with you my fifth thought. Let us surprise ourselves by showing what is possible. Let us surprise ourselves by showing what we are capable of. In my own life, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall that allowed me almost 30 years ago to step out into the open. At that point, I left my work as a scientist behind me and entered politics. That was an exciting and magical time, just as your lives will be exciting and magical.

I also experienced moments of doubt and worry, for at that time, we all knew what lay behind us, but not what might lie ahead. Perhaps that reflects a little how you, too, are feeling today, amidst all the joy of this occasion.

The six thought I also want to share with you is this. The moment when you step out into the open is also a moment of risk-taking. Letting go of the old is part of a new beginning. There is no beginning without an end, no day without night, no life without death. Our whole life consists of the difference, the space between beginning and ending.

It is what lies in between that we call life and experience. I believe at time and time again, we need to be prepared to keep bringing things to an end in order to feel the magic of new beginnings and to make the most of opportunities. That was what I learned as a student, and it is what I now in politics. Who knows what life will bring after my time as a politician? That, too, is completely open. Only one thing is clear. It will again be something different and something new.

That’s why I want to leave this wish with you. Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow mindedness for nothing has to stay as it is.

It’s six things. Take joint action in the interest of the moderate lateral global world. Keep asking yourselves, “Am I doing something because it is right, or simply because it’s possible?” Don’t forget that freedom is never something that can be taken for granted. Surprise yourself with what is possible. Remember that openness always involves risks. Letting go of the old is part of the new beginning. Above all, nothing can be taken for granted. Everything is possible. Thank you.

“In a two-hour movie, you get a handful of character-defining moments, but in real life, you face them every day. Life is one strong, long string of character-defining moments.”

Steven Spielberg

2016 Don’t shy away from the world’s pain, the filmmaker urged grads. Instead, examine it, challenge it and, while you’re at it, find “a villain to vanquish.”

Thank you, thank you, President Faust, and Paul Choi, thank you so much.

It’s an honor and a thrill to address this group of distinguished alumni and supportive friends and kvelling parents. We’ve all gathered to share in the joy of this day, so please join me in congratulating Harvard’s Class of 2016.

I can remember my own college graduation, which is easy, since it was only 14 years ago. How many of you took 37 years to graduate? Because, like most of you, I began college in my teens, but sophomore year, I was offered my dream job at Universal Studios, so I dropped out. I told my parents if my movie career didn’t go well, I’d re-enroll. It went all right.But eventually, I returned for one big reason. Most people go to college for an education, and some go for their parents, but I went for my kids. I’m the father of seven, and I kept insisting on the importance of going to college, but I hadn’t walked the walk. So, in my fifties, I re-enrolled at Cal State — Long Beach, and I earned my degree.I just have to add: It helped that they gave me course credit in paleontology for the work I did on Jurassic Park. That’s three units for Jurassic Park, thank you. Well I left college because I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and some of you know, too — but some of you don’t. Or maybe you thought you knew but are now questioning that choice. Maybe you’re sitting there trying to figure out how to tell your parents that you want to be a doctor and not a comedy writer.

Well, what you choose to do next is what we call in the movies the “character-defining moment.” Now, these are moments you’re very familiar with, like in the last “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” when Rey realizes the force is with her. Or Indiana Jones choosing mission over fear by jumping over a pile of snakes. Now in a two-hour movie, you get a handful of character-defining moments, but in real life, you face them every day. Life is one strong, long string of character-defining moments. And I was lucky that at 18 I knew what I exactly wanted to do. But I didn’t know who I was. How could I? And how could any of us? Because for the first 25 years of our lives, we are trained to listen to voices that are not our own. Parents and professors fill our heads with wisdom and information, and then employers and mentors take their place and explain how this world really works. And usually these voices of authority make sense, but sometimes, doubt starts to creep into our heads and into our hearts. And even when we think, “that’s not quite how I see the world,” it’s kind of easier to just to nod in agreement and go along, and for a while, I let that going along define my character. Because I was repressing my own point of view, because like in that Nilsson song, “Everybody was talkin’ at me, so I couldn’t hear the echoes of my mind.” And at first, the internal voice I needed to listen to was hardly audible, and it was hardly noticeable — kind of like me in high school.

But then I started paying more attention, and my intuition kicked in. And I want to be clear that your intuition is different from your conscience. They work in tandem, but here’s the distinction: Your conscience shouts, “here’s what you should do,” while your intuition whispers, “here’s what you could do.” Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that. Because once I turned to my intuition, and I tuned into it, certain projects began to pull me into them, and others, I turned away from. And up until the 1980s, my movies were mostly, I guess what you could call “escapist.” And I don’t dismiss any of these movies — not even 1941. Not even that one. And many of these early films reflected the values that I cared deeply about, and I still do. But I was in a celluloid bubble, because I’d cut my education short, my worldview was limited to what I could dream up in my head, not what the world could teach me.

But then I directed “The Color Purple.” And this one film opened my eyes to experiences that I never could have imagined, and yet were all too real. This story was filled with deep pain and deeper truths, like when Shug Avery says, “Everything wants to be loved.” My gut, which was my intuition, told me that more people needed to meet these characters and experience these truths. And while making that film, I realized that a movie could also be a mission. I hope all of you find that sense of mission. Don’t turn away from what’s painful. Examine it. Challenge it. My job is to create a world that lasts two hours. Your job is to create a world that lasts forever. You are the future innovators, motivators, leaders and caretakers. And the way you create a better future is by studying the past.

“Jurassic Park” writer Michael Crichton, who graduated from both this college and this medical school, liked to quote a favorite professor of his who said that if you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree. So history majors: Good choice, you’re in great shape…Not in the job market, but culturally. The rest of us have to make a little effort. Social media that we’re inundated and swarmed with is about the here and now. But I’ve been fighting and fighting inside my own family to get all my kids to look behind them, to look at what already has happened. Because to understand who they are is to understand who we were, and who their grandparents were, and then, what this country was like when they emigrated here. We are a nation of immigrants at least for now.

So to me, this means we all have to tell our own stories. We have so many stories to tell. Talk to your parents and your grandparents, if you can, and ask them about their stories. And I promise you, like I have promised my kids, you will not be bored. And that’s why I so often make movies based on real-life events. I look to history not to be didactic, cause that’s just a bonus, but I look because the past is filled with the greatest stories that have ever been told. Heroes and villains are not literary constructs, but they’re at the heart of all history.

And again, this is why it’s so important to listen to your internal whisper. It’s the same one that compelled Abraham Lincoln and Oskar Schindler to make the correct moral choices. In your defining moments, do not let your morals be swayed by convenience or expediency. Sticking to your character requires a lot of courage. And to be courageous, you’re going to need a lot of support.And if you’re lucky, you have parents like mine. I consider my mom my lucky charm. And when I was 12 years old, my father handed me a movie camera, the tool that allowed me to make sense of this world. And I am so grateful to him for that. And I am grateful that he’s here at Harvard, sitting right down there. My dad is 99 years old, which means he’s only one year younger than Widener Library. But unlike Widener, he’s had zero cosmetic work. And dad, there’s a lady behind you, also 99, and I’ll introduce you after this is over, okay? But look, if your family’s not always available, there’s backup. Near the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” — you remember that movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Clarence the Angel inscribes a book with this: “No man is a failure who has friends.” And I hope you hang on to the friendships you’ve made here at Harvard. And among your friends, I hope you find someone you want to share your life with.

I imagine some of you in this yard may be a tad cynical, but I want to be unapologetically sentimental. I spoke about the importance of intuition and how there’s no greater voice to follow. That is, until you meet the love of your life. And this is what happened when I met and married Kate, and that became the greatest character-defining moment of my life.Love, support, courage, intuition. All of these things are in your hero’s quiver, but still, a hero needs one more thing: A hero needs a villain to vanquish. And you’re all in luck. This world is full of monsters. And there’s racism, homophobia, ethnic hatred, class hatred, there’s political hatred, and there’s religious hatred.As a kid, I was bullied — for being Jewish. This was upsetting, but compared to what my parents and grandparents had faced, it felt tame. Because we truly believed that anti-Semitism was fading. And we were wrong. Over the last two years, nearly 20,000 Jews have left Europe to find higher ground. And earlier this year, I was at the Israeli embassy when President Obama stated the sad truth. He said: “We must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it.”

My own desire to confront that reality compelled me to start, in 1994, the Shoah Foundation. And since then, we’ve spoken to over 53,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in 63 countries and taken all their video testimonies. And we’re now gathering testimonies from genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia and Nanking. Because we must never forget that the inconceivable doesn’t happen — it happens frequently. Atrocities are happening right now. And so we wonder not just, “When will this hatred end?” but, “How did it begin?”

Now, I don’t have to tell a crowd of Red Sox fans that we are wired for tribalism. But beyond rooting for the home team, tribalism has a much darker side. Instinctively and maybe even genetically, we divide the world into “us” and “them.” So the burning question must be: How do all of us together find the “we?” How do we do that? There’s still so much work to be done, and sometimes I feel the work hasn’t even begun. And it’s not just anti-Semitism that’s surging — Islamophobia’s on the rise, too. Because there’s no difference between anyone who is discriminated against, whether it’s the Muslims, or the Jews, or minorities on the border states, or the LGBT community — it is all big one hate.

And to me, and, I think, to all of you, the only answer to more hate is more humanity. We gotta repair — we have to replace fear with curiosity. “Us” and “them” — we’ll find the “we” by connecting with each other. And by believing that we’re members of the same tribe. And by feeling empathy for every soul — even Yalies.

My son graduated from Yale, thank you …

But make sure this empathy isn’t just something that you feel. Make it something you act upon. That means vote. Peaceably protest. Speak up for those who can’t and speak up for those who may be shouting but aren’t being hard. Let your conscience shout as loud as it wants if you’re using it in the service of others.

And as an example of action in service of others, you need to look no further than this Hollywood-worthy backdrop of Memorial Church. Its south wall bears the names of Harvard alumni — like President Faust has already mentioned — students and faculty members, who gave their lives in World War II. All told, 697 souls, who once tread the ground where stand now, were lost. And at a service in this church in late 1945, Harvard President James Conant — which President Faust also mentioned — honored the brave and called upon the community to “reflect the radiance of their deeds.”

Seventy years later, this message still holds true. Because their sacrifice is not a debt that can be repaid in a single generation. It must be repaid with every generation. Just as we must never forget the atrocities, we must never forget those who fought for freedom. So as you leave this college and head out into the world, continue please to ‘reflect the radiance of their deeds,’ or as Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan would say, “Earn this.”

And please stay connected. Please never lose eye contact. This may not be a lesson you want to hear from a person who creates media, but we are spending more time looking down at our devices than we are looking in each other’s eyes. So, forgive me, but let’s start right now. Everyone here, please find someone’s eyes to look into. Students, and alumni and you too, President Faust, all of you, turn to someone you don’t know or don’t know very well. They may be standing behind you, or a couple of rows ahead. Just let your eyes meet. That’s it. That emotion you’re feeling is our shared humanity mixed in with a little social discomfort.

But, if you remember nothing else from today, I hope you remember this moment of human connection. And I hope you all had a lot of that over the past four years. Because today you start down the path of becoming the generation on which the next generation stands. And I’ve imagined many possible futures in my films, but you will determine the actual future. And I hope that it’s filled with justice and peace.

And finally, I wish you all a true, Hollywood-style happy ending. I hope you outrun the T. rex, catch the criminal and for your parents’ sake, maybe every now and then, just like E.T.: Go home. Thank you.

“Facts and truth are matters of life and death. Misinformation, disinformation, delusions, and deceit can kill.”

Martin Baron

2020 “Imperfect though [it] may be” an independent press is key to ensuring that facts are presented and truth defended in society,” the Washington Post executive editor said.

Good morning from my home. Like you, I wish we were together on campus.There is so much now we can no longer take for granted. The air we breathe is first among them. So, those of us who are healthy have ample reason to be grateful. I am also grateful to Harvard and to President Bacow for inviting me to be with you. To the Harvard Class of 2020, congratulations. And congratulations to the parents, professors, mentors and friends who helped you along the way. Joining you for graduation is a high honor.

For me, this is an opportunity – an opportunity to speak about subjects that I believe are of real urgency. Especially now during a worldwide health emergency.

I would like to discuss with you the need for a commitment to facts and to truth. Only a few months ago, I would have settled for emphasizing that our democracy depends on facts and truth. And it surely does. But now, as we can plainly see, it is more elemental than that.

Facts and truth are matters of life and death. Misinformation, disinformation, delusions and deceit can kill. Here is what can move us forward: Science and medicine. Study and knowledge. Expertise and reason. In other words, fact and truth. I want to tell you why free expression by all of us and an independent press, imperfect though we may be, is essential to getting at the truth. And why we must hold government to account. And hold other powerful interests to account as well.When I began thinking about these remarks, I expected, of course, to be on Harvard’s campus. And I thought: Not a bad place to talk about a free press. Not a bad place to talk about our often-testy relationship with official power.

It was in Boston, after all, where the first newspaper of the American colonies was founded. Its first edition was published September 25th, 1690. The very next day, the governor and council of Massachusetts shut it down. So, the press of this country has long known what it means to face a government that aims to silence it. Fortunately, there has been progress. With the First Amendment, James Madison championed the right of “freely examining public characters and measures.”

But it took a very long time before we as a nation fully absorbed what Madison was talking about. We took many ominous turns. We had the Alien and Sedition acts under John Adams, the Sedition and Espionage Acts under Woodrow Wilson, the McCarthy era. It was not always clear where we as a nation would end up.

Finally, witnessing the authoritarianism of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, we began to secure a free press in this country. The Supreme Court would forcefully emphasize the press’ role in guaranteeing a democracy. Justice Hugo Black said it well decades later: “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.” Not only the secrets of government, I would add. Our duty to inform the public does not stop there. Not by a long shot.

That was evident during my years as a journalist in Boston. Amid today’s crisis, it seems like another era. And I guess it is. But I want to tell you about it — because I think it remains instructive about what a strong, independent press must do.

I started as editor of the Boston Globe in the summer of 2001. One day prior to my start date, a Globe columnist wrote about a shocking case. A priest had been accused of abusing as many as 80 kids. A lawsuit alleged that the cardinal in Boston at the time knew about the serial abuse, didn’t do anything about it — and repeatedly reassigned this priest from parish to parish, warning no one, over decades. The Archdiocese called the accusations baseless and reckless. The Globe columnist wrote that the truth might never be known. Internal documents that might reveal it had been sealed by a judge. On my first day of work, we asked the question: How do we get at the truth? Because the public deserved to know.

That question led us to challenge the judge’s secrecy order. And our journalists launched an investigation of their own. In early 2002, we published what we had learned through reporting and by prevailing in court. We published the truth: The cardinal did know about the abuse by this priest. Yet he kept him in ministry, thus enabling further abuse. Dozens of clergy in the diocese had committed similar offenses. The cardinal had covered it all up.

And a bigger truth would emerge: Covering up such abuse had been practice and policy in the Church for decades. Only now the powerful were being held to account.

Late in 2002, after hundreds of stories on this subject, I received a letter from a Father Thomas P. Doyle. Father Doyle had struggled for years – in vain — to get the Church to confront the very issue we were writing about. He expressed deep gratitude for our work. “It is momentous,” he wrote, “and its good effects will reverberate for decades.” Father Doyle did not see journalists as the enemy. He saw us an ally when one was sorely needed. So did abuse survivors. I kept Father Doyle’s letter on my desk — a daily reminder of what journalists must do when we see evidence of wrongdoing.

Harvard’s commencement speaker two years ago, civil rights pioneer John Lewis, once said this: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.” We as journalists have the capacity – along with the constitutional right — to say and do something. We also have the obligation. And we must have the will. So must you. Every one of you has a stake in this idea of free expression. You want to be free to express your views. You should be free to hear the views of others, the same or different. You want to be free to watch any movie. To read any book. To listen to any lyrics. You should be free to say what you know is true without threat of government reprisal.And you should acknowledge this if you value these freedoms that come with democracy: Democracy cannot exist without a free and independent press. It never has.

Leaders who crave more power for themselves always move quickly to crush an independent press. Next, they destroy free expression itself. Sadly, much of the world is on that worrisome path. And efforts in this country to demonize, delegitimize and dehumanize the press give license to other governments to do the same – and to do far worse.

By the end of last year, a near-record 250 journalists worldwide were sitting in prison. Thirty of them faced accusations of “false news,” a charge virtually unheard-of only seven years earlier.

Turkey has been trading places with China as No. 1 on the list of countries that jail the most journalists. The Turkish government has shut down more than 100 media outlets and charged many journalists as terrorists. Independent media have been largely extinguished. China, of course, imposes some of the world’s tightest censorship on what its citizens can see and hear.

In Hungary, the prime minister has waged war on independent media. Harvard Nieman fellow Andras Petho, who runs an investigative reporting center there, notes that the prime minister’s business allies are “taking over hundreds of outlets and turning them into propaganda machines.”

Like other heads of state, Hungary’s prime minister has exploited the pandemic to grab more power, suppress inconvenient facts, and escalate pressure on news outlets. A new law threatens up to five-year jail terms against those accused of spreading supposedly false information. Independent news outlets have questioned how the crisis was managed. And the fear now is that such accountability journalism will lead to harassment and arrests, as it has in other countries.

In the Philippines, the courageous Maria Ressa, who founded the country’s largest online-only news site, has been battling government harassment for years on other fronts. She now faces prosecution on bogus charges of violating foreign ownership laws. By the end of last year, she had posted bail eight times. Her real violation? She brought scrutiny to the president. In Myanmar, two Reuters journalists — Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo – were imprisoned for more than 500 days for investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys. Finally, a year ago, they were released. In 2018, an opinion writer for The Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi, walked into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul to get documents he needed to marry. He was murdered there at the hands of a team sent by highest-level Saudi officials. His offense? He had sharply criticized the Saudi government. In Mexico, murderous vengeance against journalists is common. Last year, at least five were killed, more than in any other country. I think also of the risks that American journalists have taken to inform the public. Among them are colleagues I can never forget.

One is Elizabeth Neuffer. Seventeen years ago this month, I stood before her friends at the Boston Globe to report that she had died covering the war in Iraq. Elizabeth was 46, an experienced foreign correspondent, a mentor to others; vivacious and brave. Her Iraqi driver was traveling at high speed because of the risk of abductions. He lost control. Elizabeth died instantly; her translator, too. Elizabeth had a record of fearlessness in investigating war crimes and human rights abuses. Her goal: Reveal the world as it is — because someone might then make things better.

Another colleague was Anthony Shadid. In 2002, I visited Anthony, then a reporter for the Globe, after he was shot and wounded in Ramallah. Lying in a hospital in Jerusalem, it was clear that he had narrowly escaped being paralyzed. Anthony recovered and went on to report from Iraq, where he won two Pulitzer Prizes for The Washington Post. From Egypt, where he was harassed by police. From Libya, where he and three New York Times colleagues were detained by pro-government militias and physically abused. He died in 2012, at age 43, while reporting in Syria, apparently of an asthma attack. Anthony told the stories of ordinary people. Without him, their voices would have gone unheard.

And now I think constantly of reporters, photographers and videographers who risk their own well-being to be with heroic frontline health workers — frontline workers of every sort – to share their stories. Anthony, Elizabeth and my present-day colleagues sought to be eyewitnesses. To see the facts for themselves. To discover the truth and tell it. As a profession, we maintain there is such a thing as fact, there is such a thing as truth.

At Harvard, where the school’s motto is “Veritas,” presumably you do, too. Truth, we know, is not a matter of who wields power or who speaks loudest. It has nothing to do with who benefits or what is most popular. And ever since the Enlightenment, modern society has rejected the idea that truth derives from any single authority on Earth.

To determine what is factual and true, we rely on certain building blocks. Start with education. Then there is expertise. And experience. And, above all, we rely on evidence. We see that acutely now when people’s health can be jeopardized by false claims, wishful thinking and invented realities. The public’s safety requires the honest truth. Yet education, expertise, experience and evidence are being devalued, dismissed and denied. The goal is clear: to undermine the very idea of objective fact, all in pursuit of political gain. Along with that is a systematic effort to disqualify traditional independent arbiters of fact. The press tops the list of targets. But others populate the list, too: courts, historians, even scientists and medical professionals – subject-matter experts of every type.

And so today the government’s leading scientists find their motives questioned, their qualifications mocked — despite a lifetime of dedication and achievement that has made us all safer. In any democracy, we want vigorous debate about our challenges and the correct policies. But what becomes of democracy if we cannot agree on a common set of facts, if we can’t agree on what even constitutes a fact? Are we headed for extreme tribalism, believing only what our ideological soulmates say? Or do we become so cynical that we think everyone always lies for selfish reasons? Or so nihilistic that we conclude no one can ever really know what is true or false; so, no use trying to find out? Regardless, we risk entering dangerous territory. Hannah Arendt, in 1951, wrote of this in her first major work, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” There, she observed “the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts … that the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and may become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition.”

One hundred years ago – in 1920 – a renowned journalist and leading thinker, Walter Lippmann, harbored similar worries. Lippmann, once a writer for the Harvard Crimson, warned of a society where people “cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions … what somebody asserts, not what actually is.” Lippmann wrote those words because of concerns about the press itself. He saw our defects and hoped we might fix them, thus improving how information got to the public.

Ours is a profession that still has many flaws. We make mistakes of fact, and we make mistakes of judgment. We are at times overly impressed with what we know when much remains for us to learn. In making mistakes, we are like people in every other profession. And we, too, must be held accountable. What frequently gets lost, though, is the contribution of a free and independent press to our communities and our country — and to the truth.

I think back to the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when the Miami Herald showed how lax zoning, inspection and building codes had contributed to the massive destruction. Homes and lives are safer today as a result. In 2016, the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia exposed how opioids had flooded the state’s depressed communities, contributing to the highest death rates in the country. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana’s newspapers were indispensable sources of reliable information for residents. The Washington Post in 2007 revealed the shameful neglect and mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. Corrective action was immediate. The Associated Press in 2015 documented a slave trade behind our seafood supply. Two thousand slaves were freed as a result. The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017 exposed sexual predators in elite boardrooms. A movement of accountability for abuses against women took root. The New York Times in 1971 was the first to publish the Pentagon Papers, revealing a pattern of official deceit in a war that killed more than 58,000 Americans and countless others. The Washington Post broke open the Watergate scandal in 1972. That led ultimately to the president’s resignation.Those news organizations searched for the truth and told it, undeterred by pushback or pressure or vilification.Facing the truth can cause extreme discomfort. But history shows that we as a nation become better for that reckoning. It is in the spirit of the preamble to our Constitution: “to form a more perfect union.” Toward that end, it is an act of patriotism.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the great scholar and African American activist — and the first African American to graduate with a PhD from Harvard – cautioned against the falsification of events in relating our nation’s history. In 1935, distressed at how deceitfully America’s Reconstruction period was being taught, Du Bois assailed the propaganda of the era. “Nations reel and stagger on their way,” he wrote. “They make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth be ascertainable?”

At this university, you answer that question with your motto — “Veritas.” You seek the truth — with scholarship, teaching and dialogue – knowing that it really matters.My profession shares with you that mission — the always arduous, often tortuous and yet essential pursuit of truth. It is the demand that democracy makes upon us. It is the work we must do. We will keep at it. You should, too. None of us should ever stop.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for honoring me. Good luck to you all. And please, stay well.

“While the legacy of enslavement, racism, discrimination, and exclusion still influences so much of contemporary attitudes, we must never conclude that it is too late to overcome such a legacy. For it is never too late to do justice.”

Ruth J. Simmons

2021 The president of Prairie View A&M University and former president of Brown University and Smith College exhorted graduates to fight inequality and foster diversity and inclusion.

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Good day and congratulations to the Harvard University Class of 2021.

It is a singular honor to be invited to address you on this important milestone occasion. To all completing their studies today, I offer my best wishes as you undertake the next exciting phase of your lives. That you have succeeded so well during such a time as this is commendable and augurs well for the years to come when the world will rely greatly on your knowledge, your discernment, and your empathy for those less fortunate than you.

When first approached about delivering this Commencement address, I was, frankly, taken aback. I did not immediately feel up to the task. Recalling occasions when I sat in Tercentenary Theatre looking across the expanse of graduates to the steps of Widener Library, I could not picture myself confidently delivering remarks from a dais where so many more eminent figures had stood and, indeed, made history. Growing up on a constant Jim Crow diet that offered assertions of my inferiority, I’m always that same little Black girl trying to believe in and demonstrate her worthiness. Further, I thought about the challenge of what I might impart in such a pivotal national moment when social gains seem more like losses, when clarity gives way so easily to confusion, and when much heralded progress recedes like a trompe l’oeil that was never real.

I extend greetings from the faculty, administration and students of our 145 year old institution, Prairie View A&M University. And, though I have not been anointed to do so, I also bring greetings from the collection of Historically Black and Minority Serving institutions that have the weight and privilege of advancing access, equity and opportunity for so many communities across the world. Our university, like many others HBCUs, was founded at the end of Reconstruction when Blacks were thought to be unable to perform the highest level academic study. I speak to you, in fact, from the Prairie View campus whose 1500 acres were once the site of the Alta Vista Plantation. That plantation, before being sold to the State of Texas, was the site where 400 human beings were held in slavery. Thus, our very steps as they daily tread upon vestiges of the suffering of our ancestors, call to us constantly to do our duty as full citizens. Painful as such memories are, they are a powerful force that calls us to action when challenges arise.

During the 145 years following our 1876 founding, it would take many years for most universities in our nation to grant access to Blacks. So, universities like Prairie View, designed with limited resources, served the state and nation by admitting students to whom full access to the fruits of liberty was intentionally blocked. We are therefore proud of our legacy of endurance and even prouder of the fact that we converted an assertion of the inferiority of African Americans into a triumph of human capacity. Like other HBCUs, we made a place to empower rather than disparage, to open minds rather than imprison them, to create pathways to promise rather than to stifle opportunity.

Such is the task of every true university. Those of you graduating today can well attest to that. When you first arrived at Harvard as undergraduate or post-graduate students, you most likely could not have imagined the many ways that your ability would be tested, your insights sharpened and expanded, and your prospects in life improved by studying at the University. I certainly didn’t expect such results when I arrived at Harvard and yet I know now that it is likely primarily because I studied at Harvard that I have had the deeply rich and satisfying career that I’ve enjoyed for so many years.

A product of a segregated upbringing in Houston and undergraduate study at an HBCU, I am ashamed to say that in my youth, I secretly bought into the prevailing racial assumptions of the day: that someone like me would be ill-prepared to benefit from and contribute to study at a university of Harvard’s stature. I expected to be flatfooted if not oafish in the company of well-heeled and urbane students who had the advantage of the best education and a wealth of experiences. While not outwardly immobilized by fear of failing the biggest test of my life, I was inwardly terrified that I would fail to measure up. Uncertainty and malaise governed my early days at the university.

Harvard was, you see, a place steeped in other peoples’ traditions—traditions that I could not easily access. My reaction was very much akin to the French expression denoting window shopping: “lécher les vitrines.” Those of us who are outsiders are often as mere observers looking through windows, salivating and wondering how we might ever be able to attain a sense of inclusion, acceptance and respect. Just as when, as a child, I was banned from white establishments, I identified as the outsider looking enviously at others who not only had full access to Harvard’s history and traditions but who also could so easily see themselves reflected in them. Few things that I could see at Harvard at the time represented me. Perhaps it is the memory of that feeling that moved me to remain in university life to make that experience easier for others who felt excluded.

The need to make universities more aware of how first generation and underserved communities reacted to the stultified tradition in many universities shaped my conviction about the importance of individuals feeling fully embraced and respected as learners, erasing vestiges of disparagement that inevitably accrue in an unequal society. Having been profiled and racially isolated and having carried within me for so many years the weight of that sentence, I understood that to change our country, we had to insist that everyone’s humanity, everyone’s traditions and history, everyone’s identity contributes to our learning about the world we must live in together. I came to believe what Harvard expressed in its admission philosophy: that such human differences, intentionally engaged in the educational context, are as much a resource to our intellectual growth as the magnificent tomes that we build libraries to protect and the state of the art equipment proudly arrayed in our laboratories. The encounter with difference rocks!

I believe that each of us has a solemn duty to learn about and embrace that difference. That undertaking takes not a month or a year but a lifetime of concerted action to ensure that we are equipped to play a role in caring for and improving the world we inhabit together. This responsibility should encourage us to commit to our individual as well as professional role in advancing access, equality and mutual respect.

Thus, I believe that the task of a great university is not merely to test the mettle and stamina of brilliant minds but to guide them toward enlightenment, enabling thereby the most fruitful and holistic use of their students’ intelligence and humanity. That enlightenment suggests the need for improving upon students’ self-knowledge but it also means helping them judge others fairly, using the full measure of their empathy and intelligence to do so. In an environment rich in differences of background, experience and perspectives, learning is turbo charged and intensified by the juxtaposition of these differences. Those open minded enough to benefit fully from the power of this learning opportunity are bound for leadership in this time of confusion and division. The Harvard model intentionally and successfully provides to students a head start in understanding how to mediate difference in an ever more complex reality in which some exploit those differences for corrupt purposes.

Today, irrational hatred of targeted groups is seemingly on the rise, stoked by opportunists seeking advantage for themselves and their profits. What stands between such malefactors and the destruction of our common purpose are people like you who, having experienced learning through difference, courageously stand up for the rights of those who are targeted. Your Harvard education, if you were paying close attention here, should have encouraged you to commit willingly to playing such a role. If you follow through on this commitment, in addition to anything else you accomplish in life, you will be saving lives, stanching the flow of hatred and the dissolution of our national bond. You will be serving the mighty cause of justice. If we are to thrive on this orb that we share, our schools and universities must contribute deliberately to increasing our understanding of the ways to interact meaningfully with others.

Harvard is, in some ways, the most powerful university bully pulpit in the nation. It did not achieve that status merely through its age and wealth; it attained that status principally through the efforts of its faculty and graduates’ scholarly and professional output. Through its gates have come generations of scholars with immense intelligence and passionate purpose to whom fate bequeathed the laurels of success. But it is important that universities model in their own values and actions the high purpose that they hope to see in the actions of their scholars.

In that vein, Harvard has a special responsibility as both a prod and steward of the national conscience. It could sit on the hill and congratulate itself on its prowess but it could also use its immense stature to address the widening gaps in how different groups experience freedom and justice. I spoke earlier about the heroic work of HBCUs and minority serving institutions that keep our country open and advancing the cause of equality and access. Yet, many of them have been starved for much of their history by the legacy of underfunding and isolation from the mainstream of higher education.

I call on universities like Harvard to acknowledge the limitations imposed on these institutions over the past decades. While universities like Harvard had the wind at their back, flourishing from endowments, strong enrollments, constant curricular expansion, massive infrastructure improvements, and significant endowment growth, HBCUs often had gale force winds impeding their development. Our nation is finally coming to terms with the consequences of the underfunding of HBCUs but we are far from where we need to be if we are to be assured continued progress in the fight for equal educational benefits.

I ask the university that did so much for me to add to its luster by embracing the opportunity to stand alongside these historic and other minority serving institutions to build stronger partnerships, advocate for greater funding, and elevate the fight for parity and justice to the level it deserves. Let us not complain in a hundred years that those historically excluded from access and opportunity continue to ask how much longer it will take to gain the respect, inclusion and support that their service to the nation deserves.

Many minority serving institutions accept students from impoverished underserved communities where educational preparation often lacks the pre-requisites needed for certain careers. Children in those communities may experience the same or a worse fate than I and my peers did during the pre-Civil Rights era. Consigned to underfunded schools and alienating curricula, they must wonder as I did what will befall them in life. ublic schools saved me and they have the burden still of saving millions of children across this land. In so very many cases, these institutions are the only hope for many children and their families. Support for public education in this moment is as important as it was in the early days of the country when Horace Mann first called for universal education. For Mann, it was a matter of what our young country would need; it still is today as Mann’s emphasis on civic virtue continues to ring true.

Further, in such a moment, universities and all of you must play a leadership role in reversing the designation of the teaching profession as less intellectually worthy, less glamorous, and less important than the high-flying careers of financiers and technologists. Attention to and investment in K-12 teacher preparation and curricular content remains one of the most important ways for universities and the average citizen to contribute to the civic good.

None of us is exempt from responsibility for the future we give our children. Harvard has its role and so do all of you. I have come to ask you who graduate today what you are prepared to do to acknowledge and address the historic biases and inequities that so many continue to experience. Will your actions point us in a more uplifting direction? For, just as we recount the moral bankruptcy of those who cruelly enslaved others, we also tell the story of those who were equally guilty because they refused to challenge the practice of slavery. In the future, the history of these times will reveal both what we do and what we fail to do to address the unjust treatment of marginalized groups. Among all that you will have learned at Harvard, I hope that the consciousness of your responsibility in the struggle for equality remains with you. While the legacy of enslavement, racism, discrimination and exclusion still influences so much of contemporary attitudes, we must never conclude that it is too late to overcome such a legacy. For it is never too late to do justice.

Today, I call on all of you to declare that you will not give sanction to discriminatory actions that hold some groups back to the advantage of others. I call on you to be a force for inclusion by not choosing enclaves of wealth, privilege and tribalism such that you abandon the lessons you learned from your Harvard experience of diversity. I call on you to do your part to ensure that generations to come will no longer be standing on the outside fighting for fairness, respect and inclusion.

Today, after decades in the academy, my path has taken me back to a place where students are waging the same battles that were so hard fought when I was a teenager: safe passage in the face of bigotry, the right to vote, and equal access to educational and professional opportunities. Sandra Bland, a Prairie View alumna, was stopped for a minor traffic offense at the entrance to our campus. Jailed for this offense, she was found deceased in her cell three days later. Must every generation add more tragic evidence of the racial hatred that has troubled the world? Our work is not done as long as there are young people growing up with the thought that they matter less than others. As long as they have fewer and narrower educational opportunities. As long as they must fear for their safety every moment of every day of their lives. As long as their full participation in society is circumscribed by policies that willfully chip away at or block their rights.

Just as I ask Harvard to use its voice on behalf of minority institutions that have been unfairly treated across time, I ask you to add your voice to the cause of justice wherever you go. Help the children of need wherever they are: in underfunded public schools, in neighborhoods bereft of resources, in search of a way to belong. If they do not hear your voices advocating for them and their worth, what must they conclude about their place in the world?

If you take up the cause of these children, you are taking up the greatest cause—that of justice. Today, you earn your laurels as a scholar. Taking up the cause of justice, you will earn your laurels as a human being.

Congratulations, once again, and God speed.

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How to Write a Memorable Graduation Speech

by Sue Weems | 0 comments

If you're lucky enough to be asked to speak at a commencement ceremony, at any level, you know the pressure of writing a memorable speech with broad appeal that fits within the time constraints. But how to write a graduation speech that doesn't bore, drag, or flop? Here's a secret: use your storytelling skills to write a great graduation speech.

As a teacher, I have probably heard close to a hundred commencement speeches—those five to twenty minute addresses full of life lessons, inspirational quotes and if we're lucky, funny stories. But more often than not, they fall pieced together clichés and motivational quotes. Forgettable.

The secret to writing a memorable graduation speech? Storytelling. Today let's look at how to use storytelling to write a memorable graduation speech.

A Speech to Remember

Out of all those school graduation speeches I've heard, I can honestly say I only remember one or two. One in particular always leaps to my mind.

A few years ago, a high school senior who had been selected by his peers as a graduation speaker told a story about playing a game with a childhood friend—a game where they pretended to be construction workers. A game they called “builders.”

He recounted their exploits in the sand box: moving dirt, building small stick structures, and working together to make something new. We laughed at his vivid imagery, each remembering our own toy trucks and shovels and play. 

He shifted from that childhood game to the class memories they had built together as students through the years, continuing to develop the theme of building a life.

And then he revealed that his childhood friend—his fellow builder—should have been sitting with their graduating class that day. He'd died in an accident a year before. The speaker closed with a challenge to his fellow students to remember their peer and to be builders—people who create things that outlast them.

The entire stadium went wild as the student graduation speech ended. I couldn't stop the tears flowing down my cheeks. When I saw the student speaker later, I thanked him for his speech, for sharing his love for his friend, for his story that struck such a hopeful note. 

It reminded me that human experience is best related not in quippy inspirational quotes strung together, but in stories. If you're asked to be a commencement speaker, here are a few storytelling principles that will help you write a great graduation speech. 

5 Steps to Write a Memorable Graduation Speech

1. consider the occasion and audience.

A speech for an elementary promotion ceremony has a much different focus and audience than one for a post-graduate ceremony. Just like when you write a story, take time to think about the target audience. 

Who are they? What are they celebrating? How can you meet their expectations for the day and commemorate them in a special way?

When my student gave his speech about his builder friend, he knew he was speaking to his peers, but he had an awareness that their families and teachers were also present. 

2. Choose a story

Here's where most speeches go wrong: they don't ground the remarks in a story. Sure, a lot of speeches rely on favorite quotes, but those are easily forgettable. Stories are how the human brain makes sense of the world; we're hardwired to remember stories.

Dig into your personal experiences, school memories, or other life experience. Usually, you want a true story, a personal story for this kind of speech.  

How do you choose?

When I help students with speeches or any kind of personal narrative writing, I always ask them to make a list of moments where they made a choice that changed their lives for better or worse. 

If you can't think of one, consider a time you watched first-hand as someone else made a significant choice and what it taught you. 

A story depends on a goal and a tough choice (remember dilemma ?)—that's what creates the significance. But you'll also want to choose a story that will emotionally connect with the audience. 

What story can you tell using vivid images that left you changed or taught you something valuable that would resonate with this audience? That's the story to choose.

3. Build a structure and tell the story

Once you know the story you want to tell, use what you know about premise to structure and tell the story first and then build out the rest of the speech around it. 

A premise outlines a character with a goal who meets conflict and has to act until they reach a crisis point and must make a tough decision creating a resolution. 

The length of the story will depend on the time constraints, but you won't be able to delve deeply into backstory or give a prologue. You're going to have to set the scene quickly and get the story in motion. 

An example: I once gave a speech to a group of students (and their families) who were being honored for their resilience and hard work. Most had found themselves  with failing grades and low confidence at one point in the year, but with their hard work and the help of their families and teachers, they had turned it around.  I told the story of a time my daughter was in middle school taking a challenging math class. We would sit at the kitchen table while she insisted she couldn't do the work, it was too hard, etc. It went on for a couple weeks, and we were both so frustrated. I realized I had a choice: I needed to remind her that this was her challenge and that SHE had a couple of different routes (or choices) to solve it.  She could drop the class. She could spend all year crying at the table, slogging through the work and pass it somehow. Or, she could remember that anytime something is new, it's hard, and she could do her best, knowing it would get easier with time—just like riding her bike.

Once I had told the story, I connected it to their experience. I congratulated them on learning so early that they could do far more than they first believed and that hard work and practice makes new tasks easier.

At the end, I told them I hoped they would remember this moment of recognition the next time they thought something was hard. 

Once you know the story you want to tell your audience, build a simple intro to connect it to their experience. After the story, draw out the insight and connect to the event (in this case, their graduation). 

4. Lean into theme

The student who gave the memorable builder speech I shared above leaned into a key theme : building something that lasts. It was the point of his story and he used it as an illustration across different ages to show how the childhood lessons they learned had staying power.

You can choose a common theme , but know that your story will make the application unique. Also, don't feel like you have to state the theme over and over. If the story and insight are strong, stating the theme once might be enough. 

5. Revise to get clear and concise

To revise a speech, I look at two things: the time it takes to deliver and the clarity of the story. I always try to err on the side of speaking for LESS time than I am allotted. This gives space in the speech for audience reaction. 

I typically write speeches out in short chunks of text, and I go through and group them:

• connection or insight
• call to action and close

Then, look at every sentence and get brutal with the cuts. Where have I spent too much time describing something? Where have I fallen into unnecessary details? Which sentences are not needed? 

I look at verbs and sentence length too, making sure that the sentences read aloud in a natural and even musical way. Try to vary sentence length and choose the most precise, coherent language. 

Run through the speech a few times aloud, noting where you have to stop and reread to revise. 

A speech doesn't have to be perfect to meet the audience where they are and show both respect for the moment and joy in the celebration. 

Writing a graduation speech that inspires and remains with the audience long after the event doesn't have to be a daunting task. Use these storytelling tips to write and deliver a great speech on that special day. 

Have you ever heard a graduation speech that stayed with you? What did the speaker say that was especially memorable? Share your best tips in the comments. 

For today's practice, write a graduation speech. It might be for a real graduation, or you could also use it as a way to develop a character for a work in progress, since their voice and backstory will be different from your own. 

Set the timer for fifteen minutes . Write the speech and then share a draft in the Pro Practice Workshop , offering feedback to a few others writers. 

Sue Weems is a writer, teacher, and traveler with an advanced degree in (mostly fictional) revenge. When she’s not rationalizing her love for parentheses (and dramatic asides), she follows a sailor around the globe with their four children, two dogs, and an impossibly tall stack of books to read. You can read more of her writing tips on her website .

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Middle School Graduation Speech Examples

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Learn about our Editorial Policy .

Celebrate the excitement of moving on from middle school with a fun or inspiring speech to your classmates at graduation. Use the example speeches as is by clicking on the image of the one you love to download and print it. If you run into any trouble using the sample graduation speeches, check with the Adobe Guide for troubleshooting.

Funny Middle School Graduation Speech

In this trendy speech, you'll compare middle school to the game Minecraft. Since you're probably a noob at giving speeches, have a little fun with your speech to help ease your anxiety because funny graduation speeches are usually audience favorites.

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Customization Options

By adding in a few specific details and examples, you can take this speech from generic to unique.

• Provide specific examples of the "blocks" you gathered such as quotes from your favorite teachers or the principal's catchphrase.
• Expand on what you've created by including examples of group projects completed by your grade.
• Add in your school's full name and the name of the high school you'll be moving onto.

Inspirational Junior High Graduation Speech

Get your fellow classmates fired up and excited about the next chapter of your lives with an inspirational junior high graduation speech. If you're giving a speech at a more formal or professional ceremony, this example is a great way to show your mature side.

The point of a motivational speech is to show where you came from as a class and where you can go together in the future.

• Add details about the different social groups at your school to make it more relatable to other students.
• Give an example or two of something you all achieved together like winning spirit week or collecting donations for a charity.
• Expand on the storm theme by adding more elements of a storm, such as lightning or hail, and how those can be related to your class.

How to Create a Great Graduation Speech

You can also use these examples as inspiration for the length and tone of your own unique middle school graduation speech. Follow the general format, but choose your own theme and word things in your own way.

What to Include

Every great middle school graduation speech includes a few key things:

• An attention-grabbing first line
• Thank you to classmates, school, and/or families
• Memorable shared middle school experiences
• How you've grown
• An inspirational ending that excites everyone about high school

Theme Ideas

Choose a theme you are knowledgeable or passionate about to make your speech more impactful. Include quotes or graduation poems to further connect your theme.

• Favorite school subject
• School mascot qualities
• Pop culture trends
• School motto or song
• Things that are in the middle
• Measurements

What to Avoid

Since you'll be giving your speech to a crowd, you want to try to keep it short, politically correct, and interesting. When writing your speech, avoid:

• Teasing classmates or teachers
• Using foul language or offensive terms
• Giving too many personal feelings and examples that only apply to your experience
• Off-topic rambling
• Angry or embarrassing experiences or stories

End on a High Note

You've survived middle school ! End your last days of junior high with a great speech kids, parents, and teachers will remember for years to come. Take the opportunity to look back on the past years and what they've meant to you and your classmates.

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• School Leaders

Creative Ways to Use Graphic Novels in the Classroom! 🎥

4 Teachable Moments from Middle and High School Graduation Speeches

Great lessons from kids ready to take on the world.

As we approach the end of another school year, you may be feeling tired, maybe even a bit burned out. Teaching is a demanding, exhausting job that asks a lot of those called to it. Being a teacher can absolutely knock us down at times, but if we remember why we do it, we’ll be able to get up—better and stronger each time. For me, the words of a middle and high school graduation speech can do that. The following four remind us why we do this, and they also provide teachable moments for both us and our students.

1. When in doubt…fall back on the classics.

Valedictorian Meeklin Ragan’s Dr. Seuss inspired high school graduation speech is charming, but also should serve as a great reminder for teachers everywhere—Dr. Seuss does have a lot to offer students of all ages! We shouldn’t be afraid to seek ideas in unconventional places. Not only can children’s books be used to teach important lessons relevant to any subject, but never underestimate the appeal of allowing your students (even at the secondary level) to find inspiration in interesting places.

2. Remember your audience.

The valedictorian in this high school graduation speech makes good points. He raises excellent and thought-provoking questions. He definitely reflects upon his own experience in high school. But in his quest for brutal honesty, he lost sight of his audience; fellow graduates who had worked hard to be where they were, many of whom who were probably just fine with not being valedictorian and were looking forward to a humorous or inspirational speech. As teachers, we too need to remember our audience. Are we talking too much and not giving them time to process? Are we injecting levity into our lessons when appropriate? Is there more we could do to engage our students and make them active learners in our classrooms?

4. Celebrate everyone’s achievements.

Senior class president Ryan Burton does something a bit different in his high school graduation speech. He celebrates the achievements of his classmates. He discusses just how much scholarship money was earned by his peers, the various academic and athletic awards won by his classmates, and the charitable work they completed. Burton also addresses the struggles they overcame together and their strength as a class. The one thing he doesn’t spend a lot of time doing? Talking about himself. As teachers, we are often the center of our classroom universe with our students revolving around us. But we could learn a valuable lesson from Burton by remembering to flip that model around every once in a while, making sure to celebrate the achievements of all our students—big or small, and putting them in the center of the action while we work with them from the sidelines, letting them shine.

4. Find (and remember!) your why.

Lawrence Brown delivered an inspirational and highly motivational high school graduation speech to his class in 2014 based on the question, “What is your WHY?” He discussed how life was going to hit all of his classmates hard at some point or another, but what really mattered was that they got up and kept going, kept trying. To do that, he explained, they would need “a why,” a reason, something that they felt passionate about. Brown illustrated this idea with anecdotes about athletes and entrepreneurs who had all experienced enormous setbacks only to come back stronger and better because they knew what they wanted from their lives. Delivered in a humble and humorous tone, Brown’s speech has a lot to offer.

Congratulations teachers. We’ve just spent another wonderful year in this challenging and rewarding profession!

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Home › Inspirational Graduation Speeches

Inspirational Graduation Speeches

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Do you have a graduating son or daughter? A high school or college graduation is a major milestone in life that should not be ignored. The graduation ceremony celebrates hard work and encourages students to move into the world to achieve great things. This hopeful message is further cemented through an inspirational graduation speech.

As you celebrate graduation day and wish your student good luck, consider the following commencement advice you can share as well as inspirational quotes for a happy graduation.

Here are the best graduation speeches and inspirational message graduation quotes to inspire you and change your life.

Page Contents

1. Barack Obama – Howard University, 2016

You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. I’ll repeat that. I want you to have passion, but you have to have a strategy. Not just awareness but action. Not just hashtags, but votes. Barack Obama

During his graduation message, Barack Obama spoke with hope. He urged the graduating students to be hardworking yet pragmatic as they sought justice, equality, and freedom. Howard University is one of the nation’s most distinguished and historically Black universities.

In 2020, Barack Obama also shared a graduation message to the Class of 2020 as part of Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020 . These students had to learn to overcome obstacles and challenges that classes before them had not had to deal with due to the pandemic.

The disappointments of missing a live graduation, those will pass pretty quick…What remains true is that your graduation marks your passage into adulthood—the time when you begin to take charge of your own life. It’s when you get to decide what’s important to you: the kind of career you want to pursue. Who you want to build a family with. The values you want to live by. And given the current state of the world, that may be kind of scary. Barack Obama

Obama goes on to offer hope and support as graduating students set out to navigate a very new landscape and shape a new world.

2. David Foster Wallace – Kenyon Graduation Speech, 2005

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually, one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water? David Foster Wallace

In this commencement address, Wallace reminds us that we often forget, or take for granted, the most obvious things around us. He acknowledges it’s difficult to stay aware of what’s happening in the world, especially when you’re too busy dealing with the monologue inside your head.

That’s what a college education is about, according to him. It’s learning how to think and exercising some degree of control over your thoughts so you can choose what to pay attention to.

Our thoughts affect our realities, and the ability to choose how you “construct meaning from experience” will determine the lenses from which you see the world and how you react in return.

3. Natalie Portman – Harvard Graduation Speech 2015

Sometimes your insecurities and your inexperience may lead you, too, to embrace other people’s expectations, standards, or values. But you can harness that inexperience to carve out your own path, one that is free of the burden of knowing how things are supposed to be, a path that is defined by its own particular set of reasons . Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman majored in psychology at Harvard University because she believed it would help her acting. She graduated in 2003. In her commencement speech at the 2015 graduation ceremony, she spoke of her own self-doubt and gave an inspiring, funny , and wisdom-filled speech for the graduating class.

Portman said even though she was a successful student and went on to find success as an actress, she still struggled with her own worth but eventually learned to set her own goals.

4. Ellen DeGeneres – Tulane University, 2009

Never follow anyone else’s path, unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path and by all means you should follow that. Don’t give advice, it will come back and bite you in the ass. Don’t take anyone’s advice. So my advice to you is to be true to yourself and everything will be fine. Ellen Degeneres

This is one of the funniest graduation speeches ever! All humor aside, this speech shows why  it’s better to be true to yourself instead of trying desperately to be a second-rate version of someone else.

For years, Ellen thought being bisexual might prevent her from being a successful stand-up comedian, but it’s just not the case. Ellen proved that you could be successful, whoever you are, if you worked hard and learned from your past experiences— even one as sad as the death of a loved one.

5. Charlie Munger – University of California Law School, 2007

*Skip to 4:08 for the actual speech

You’re not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you’re going to learn after you leave here. Charlie Munger

Education doesn’t stop after you graduate from college. It doesn’t stop after you finish your MBA or PhD either. Munger says, “Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not just something you do to advance in life.”

It’s a moral duty because it’s only through continuous learning that we can add to the vast knowledge of man kind. If we stopped learning, progress in all industries—computers, finance, engineering, biology, stops as well.

6. Michelle Obama – Eastern Kentucky University, 2013

If you’re a Democrat, spend some time talking to a Republican. And if you’re a Republican, have a chat with a Democrat. Maybe you’ll find some common ground, maybe you won’t. But if you honestly engage with an open mind and an open heart, I guarantee you’ll learn something. And goodness knows we need more of that, because we know what happens when we only talk to people who think like we do — we just get more stuck in our ways, more divided, and it gets harder to come together for a common purpose. Michelle Obama

As far as inspirational speeches go, Michelle Obama’s speech is very actionable. Her advice is simple (not easy), talk to each other with an open mind.

Different religion, race, political stand, it doesn’t matter. We can all learn from one another.

7. Jim Carrey – Maharashi University of Management, 2014

This is one of my favorite motivational speeches because Jim Carrey is such a good example of his message.

So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an account. Jim Carrey

Carrey’s father lost his accounting job when he was 12, and it was then he realized that failure is inevitable , whether you’re doing what you want or not. If that’s the case, you might as well take a stab at doing something you love.

8. J.K Rowling – Harvard Commencement Address, 2008

I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. J.K. Rowling

This is probably one of the most inspirational videos for writers and creatives everywhere.

Rowling was suffering from depression when he wrote the Harry Potter books. But through grit and patience with herself, she was able to complete the first Harry Potter Manuscript and, stay motivated to continue even when feeling down. Thanks to her drive and imagination, the world has Harry Potter !

9. Bono – University of Pennsylvania, 2004

In case you don’t know him, Bono is the lead singer of the famous band U2. Of course, being the rock star he is, he leads his speech by saying, “My name is Bono, and I am a rock star.”

In his speech, he urges graduates to carefully consider their big idea, in saying:

What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, (and) your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania? The world is more malleable than you think, and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape. Bono

Being a rock star, I thought Bono would talk about the perils of fame, the road to stardom or something to that effect. But instead, he talked about big ideas and changing the world.

10. Amy Poehler – Harvard University, 2011

Life is like a heist that requires good drivers, an explosives expert, a hot girl who doubles as a master of disguise, and this is a hard and fast rule. If the Rock shows up, they’re on to you . Amy Poehler

During her commencement speech at Harvard University in 2011, Amy Poehler expressed her surprise at the invitation to do so. She delivered a speech with jokes, advice, and insight as she looked out at the graduates.

She told them to head out into the world with love, light, joy, and laughter. Finishing off her speech in true Amy Poehler fashion, she also says, “please don’t forget to tip your waitresses.”

11. Meryl Streep – Barnard College, 2010

This is your time, and it feels normal to you, but really there is no normal. There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change . Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep is an actress most famous for Sophie’s Choice , The Devil Wears Prada , and Mamma Mia . She was asked to deliver the commencement speech to Barnard College in 2010. Her speech was dripping with extreme personality, honesty, and bluntness.

Streep shared her own personal stories and emphasized the importance of empathy. The audience was all women, so the speech was directed at them, but she shared many graduation messages that applied to everyone.

12. Kerry Washington – George Washington University, 2013

You and you alone are the only person who can live the life that writes the story you were meant to tell . Kerry Washington

Kerry Washington is an actress, producer, and director. In 2018, she was named the eighth highest-paid television actress and has won several awards, including the President’s Award.

In her commencement speech at George Washington University in 2013, she urged graduates to go beyond their comfort zones and live their own stories.

How to Create Your Own Inspirational Graduation Speech

Do you need to write your own inspirational speech or curate the perfect graduation message? Here are a few tips on how to do just that, so you can inspire others like the commencement speeches above.

Start With a Quote

Start with a relevant quote. This sets the overall tone of your speech and grabs your audience’s attention. A good example of this is a quote by David Brinkley, “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”

Provide Scenarios

Now that you have drawn in the audience, present a what-if scenario to encourage the audience to continue following your thought process.

You can also provide a scenario encouraging the audience to put themselves directly into it. Suggest that they imagine doing something and ask what they would do if it doesn’t go as planned.

If you are giving a graduation message, ask where they see themselves years down the road or what they picture success as. You can then offer advice and insight based on your own experience.

Ask Questions

You should also ask questions, whether they are literal or rhetorical. When you present a question to someone, the person intuitively answers it, keeping them engaged with what you have to say.

Pause for Silence

When giving an inspirational speech, it also helps to pause for a few seconds after important points. This pause allows the audience to react to what you have to say and settle down before you continue with your next statement. The pause is also a good way to draw attention to what you want to say.

What Makes an Inspirational Graduation Speech?

The best graduation speech should have a very uplifting message that leads with education and wisdom. The graduation speech should focus on the graduates’ achievements and accomplishments. It should highlight the sacrifices that may have been made.

When writing a graduation or inspirational speech, ensure a strong theme or message is conveyed to keep your audience’s focus and attention.

Do you remember the speaker on your graduation day? What pearls of wisdom did he or she share?

Related Reading : Don’t forget what you worked so hard on in school! Check out our 150 Education Quotes for Teachers and Students , too. These gems are good for any graduation card when offering congratulations.

Natalie Seale

3 thoughts on “Inspirational Graduation Speeches”

Am really inspired by these brief messages,indeed education has no boundary; therefore, I say to you,” education is immeasurable, regardless of what disciplines or background we find ourselves.

These are very inspiring. My favorite is from J.K. Rowling. Thanks for sharing

Actually Very Inspiring ……thanks for sharing

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Graduation Speech Examples

In this article, you will find examples of graduation speeches written by WriteSpeech.io that you can use to write your own speech.

Graduation marks a significant milestone in a person’s life, a moment of pride and celebration. It is an occasion that brings with it a mixture of excitement, nostalgia, and anticipation for the future.

To help you craft an unforgettable speech, here are five different examples of graduation speeches, written by writespeech.io . Each example is written for different academic environments and designed to meet varying needs in tone and length.

1. High School Graduation Speech Example

Length: Medium (around 4 minutes)

Tone: Neutral

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, faculty members, parents, and fellow graduates of the class of [Graduation Year], it is an honor to stand before you today as we celebrate this significant milestone in our lives. As we reflect on our high school journey, we are filled with a mix of emotions - pride, nostalgia, excitement, and perhaps a hint of uncertainty about the future. The last four years have been a whirlwind of growth, learning, challenges, and triumphs. We have worked hard, overcome obstacles, and persevered to reach this momentous day. Today marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. As we prepare to embark on new adventures and pursue our dreams, let us remember the lessons we have learned inside and outside the classroom. The friendships we have forged, the teachers who have inspired us, and the experiences that have shaped us have all contributed to our personal and academic growth. As we look towards the future, let us carry with us the values of perseverance, resilience, and empathy that we have cultivated during our time here. Let us embrace change with open minds and open hearts, knowing that we have the skills and abilities to navigate the unknown with confidence and determination. Graduation is not just a ceremony; it is a symbol of our dedication, hard work, and commitment to our own success. It is a testament to the support of our families, friends, and educators who have helped us along the way. Let us express our gratitude to all those who have supported us on this journey, and let us strive to make them proud as we move forward into the next phase of our lives. Class of [Graduation Year], as we stand on the brink of a new beginning, let us embrace the challenges and opportunities ahead with courage and enthusiasm. Congratulations to each and every one of you on your graduation, and may your future be filled with success, fulfillment, and happiness. Thank you.

2. College Graduation Speech Example

Length: Medium (around 5 minutes)

Dear fellow graduates, faculty, family, and friends, As we stand here today in our regal caps and gowns, it is surreal to think that the time has come for us to embark on the next chapter of our lives. The year [Graduation Year] will forever be ingrained in our memories as the year we officially transition from students to graduates, ready to take on the world with vigor and determination. Throughout our time here, we have laughed together, studied together, and supported each other through both triumphs and challenges. The bonds we have formed and the memories we have created will stay with us forever, serving as a reminder of the incredible journey we have shared. Today is a celebration of the hard work, dedication, and perseverance that have brought us to this moment. Each of us has faced obstacles along the way, but we have proven time and time again that we are resilient, capable, and destined for greatness. As we look towards the future, let us remember the lessons we have learned, the friendships we have made, and the experiences that have shaped us into the individuals we are today. Let us carry the spirit of curiosity, passion, and innovation with us as we venture out into the world, ready to make our mark and leave a lasting impact. To our professors, mentors, and loved ones who have supported us along the way, we extend our deepest gratitude. Your guidance, wisdom, and unwavering belief in us have been the foundation upon which we have built our success. As we say goodbye to this chapter of our lives and embrace the endless possibilities that lie ahead, let us do so with hope, courage, and an unwavering belief in ourselves. Congratulations to the graduating class of [Graduation Year] - may your future be bright, your dreams be fulfilled, and your journey be filled with love and joy. Thank you.

3. College Graduation Speech Short Example

Length: Short (around 3 minutes)

Tone: Enthusiastic

Class of [Graduation Year], it is an honor to stand before you all today as we celebrate our graduation! We made it, we conquered every challenge, and we have emerged stronger and wiser. This is a momentous occasion that marks the culmination of years of hard work, dedication, and determination. As we reflect on our time here, we remember the late nights studying, the group projects that tested our patience, and the friendships that will last a lifetime. We have grown academically, emotionally, and socially, thanks to the experiences and opportunities that our university has provided us. Today, as we look towards the future, let us remember the lessons we have learned within these campus walls. Let us remember the value of resilience, the importance of perseverance, and the power of community. We have shown that we can overcome any obstacle that comes our way and that with determination and passion, anything is possible. Every one of us has the power to shape our destinies, to make a positive impact on the world, and to leave a mark that will last for generations to come. So, let us go forth from this moment with courage in our hearts, inspiration in our souls, and a commitment to making our dreams a reality. Class of [Graduation Year], the future is ours to seize! Let us embrace it with open arms, with hope in our hearts, and with a zest for life that knows no bounds. Congratulations to each one of you, and may our journey ahead be filled with success, happiness, and fulfillment. Thank you for the memories, the laughter, and the friendships. Go forth and conquer the world! Go forth and make a difference! Once again, congratulations, Class of [Graduation Year]! We did it!

4. University Graduation Speech Example

Length: Long (around 7 minutes)

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished faculty members, beloved friends and family, and fellow graduates of the class of [Graduation Year], it is with immense joy and gratitude that I stand before you today to celebrate this momentous occasion. As we gather here, on the cusp of a new beginning, we are surrounded by an abundance of memories, both cherished and challenging, that have shaped our journey as university students. Looking back on our time here, I am overwhelmed by a sense of pride in every one of us. We have overcome countless obstacles, pushed ourselves beyond our limits, and emerged stronger, wiser, and more resilient than ever before. The late nights spent studying, the group projects that tested our patience, the moments of self-doubt and uncertainty – all of these experiences have contributed to shaping us into the individuals we are today. But beyond the academic achievements and accolades that we have earned, what truly sets us apart is the sense of community that we have fostered here. The friendships we have made, the bonds we have formed, and the support we have shown one another have created a network of love and camaraderie that will endure long after we leave these halls. As we stand on the threshold of the next chapter of our lives, let us take a moment to reflect on the lessons we have learned during our time here. We have learned the value of hard work, perseverance, and dedication. We have learned that success is not measured solely by grades or achievements, but by the impact we have on the world around us. We have learned the importance of empathy, kindness, and understanding – qualities that will serve us well as we navigate the complexities of the world beyond these walls. But perhaps the most important lesson we have learned is the power of believing in ourselves. Each of us has faced moments of doubt, of insecurity, of fear. And yet, through it all, we have remained steadfast in our belief that we are capable of achieving greatness. As we move forward into the unknown, let us carry this belief with us – let it be our guiding light, our North Star, guiding us through the darkest of times. And so, as we prepare to embark on this new adventure, I urge you all to embrace the future with open hearts and open minds. Let us be fearless in the pursuit of our dreams, bold in the face of adversity, and unwavering in our commitment to making the world a better place. To my fellow graduates, I offer my heartfelt congratulations. May your future be filled with joy, success, and fulfillment. And may the memories we have created here sustain us in the years to come. Thank you, class of [Graduation Year], for inspiring me, for challenging me, and for being a part of this incredible journey. Here's to us, to our accomplishments, and to the limitless possibilities that lie ahead. Congratulations, and may the future shine brightly upon us all.

5. Community College Graduation Speech Example

Dear fellow graduates, esteemed faculty members, friends, and family, As I stand before you today, filled with a mix of emotions — excitement, nostalgia, gratitude, and a hint of nervousness — I am reminded of the incredible journey we have all undertaken to reach this momentous occasion. The year 2024 will forever hold a special place in our hearts as the year we officially became graduates of this esteemed university. Looking back on our time here, we have experienced moments of triumph, moments of challenge, and moments of growth that have shaped us into the individuals we are today. We have pulled all-nighters studying for exams, collaborated on group projects, cheered on our sports teams, and formed friendships that will last a lifetime. Each class we attended, each professor we learned from, and each experience we encountered have played a vital role in preparing us for the next chapter of our lives. As we step out into the world beyond these university walls, we are armed with knowledge, skills, and a passion to make a difference. The world may seem daunting at times, but I am confident that every one of us has the potential to create a meaningful impact in our unique way. Whether we pursue further education, enter the workforce, start our own businesses, or embark on a different path altogether, let us remember the lessons we have learned here and carry the spirit of curiosity, perseverance, and resilience with us. I want to take a moment to express my deepest appreciation to our families, friends, and loved ones who have supported us throughout this journey. Their unwavering belief in our abilities, their patience during our moments of stress, and their endless encouragement have been the driving force behind our success. Let us take this opportunity to thank them for all that they have done for us and to celebrate this achievement together. As we look towards the future, let us maintain a sense of optimism and hope for what lies ahead. Let us embrace new opportunities with open hearts and open minds, knowing that we are well-equipped to face whatever challenges come our way. And most importantly, let us never forget the friendships we have forged, the memories we have created, and the lessons we have learned during our time here. Congratulations, Class of 2024! May your futures be bright, your dreams be bold, and your hearts be filled with joy as you embark on this new chapter in your lives. Thank you for being a part of my university journey, and may we all continue to inspire and uplift each other in the years to come. Here's to us, here's to our future, and here's to the endless possibilities that lie ahead. Go forth and conquer, my fellow graduates! Thank you.

As you step up to deliver your speech, remember that this is not just a celebration of academic achievements but also a pivotal life moment for every graduate present. Your words have the power to impact, encourage, and shape how your fellow graduates view and begin their next chapter.

Whether your speech is reflective, humorous, profound, direct, or community-focused, it should resonate with your personal experiences and the collective journey of your peers.

With writespeech.io , you can craft a message that not only honors this special day but also inspires and entertains you just need to fill the template and we will write a unique speech for you.

Congratulations on reaching this significant milestone, and may your speech be as memorable as your time spent learning and growing!

Ready to start writting your speech?

How to write an inspiring graduation speech

.css-26rqae{font-weight:500;} crafting a graduation speech to remember.

Giving a great graduation speech is an opportunity to leave a lasting impression on fellow graduates and the audience. If your teenager has the honor of speaking at their ceremony, try these graduation speech ideas to help them craft a unique, unforgettable address.

Start with a personal story

Sharing a personal experience can make any speech more relatable and engaging for the audience. Consider incorporating a specific moment or lesson from their life or school journey.

Keep it concise

Most graduation ceremonies have multiple time constraints to consider. The school may give your child a suggested speech length. Most college and university commencement speeches   last around 5-10 minutes, so high school speeches are typically shorter. You can guide your honoree to keep it concise and focus on delivering a few key points effectively.

Use humor wisely

Humor can make a speech memorable and help connect with the audience. But at a formal commencement, especially high school, be careful not to overdo it or use inappropriate jokes. Always keep in mind the tone and theme of the event.

Include inspirational quotes

Incorporating quotes from influential figures can add depth and meaning to a speech. Writers might choose quotes that resonate with their message and tie in seamlessly with their overall theme.

Address the audience directly

To help keep speech language engaging, it’s helpful to remember who your primary audience is. Are you speaking mainly to your fellow graduates? Parents? Teachers and faculty? Or, a combination of all. Try to acknowledge them directly during the speech. This can help create a sense of connection and community.

End on a high note

A powerful conclusion can leave a lasting impact on an audience. Consider ending your speech with an inspiring call to action or leaving the audience with a memorable quote or message.

Practice, practice, practice

It's important to practice a speech beforehand to ensure you can deliver it confidently and smoothly. It can also help identify any areas that may need improvement.

Graduation speech ideas

Here are some inspirational tidbits to help get your speechwriter started:

Share a personal story or experience that highlights the theme, such as growth and transformation.

Reflect on the challenges and triumphs of the graduating class as a whole.

Discuss the importance of resilience and perseverance in achieving success.

Give practical advice for life after high school, such as financial management or maintaining relationships.

Use humor to lighten the mood and connect with your audience.

Acknowledge the impact of teachers, parents, and mentors in shaping the graduates' lives.

Incorporate inspiring quotes from influential figures that align with your message.

Discuss the significance of community and coming together during difficult times.

Encourage graduates to envision their future and the legacy they hope to build, emphasizing the impact of setting goals and striving for excellence.

Highlight the value of lifelong learning, urging peers to remain curious and open to new experiences and knowledge.

Speak to the power of adaptability and innovation in a rapidly changing world and the graduates' role in shaping the future.

Celebrate diversity and the strength found in embracing different perspectives and backgrounds within the graduating class.

Address the idea of social responsibility and the impact each graduate can have on their community and the world at large.

Writing and delivering a graduation speech is both a responsibility and an opportunity to inspire and leave a lasting impression. By keeping your audience in mind, reflecting on your experiences, staying concise, having a clear message, acknowledging others, and practicing and editing, you can write an inspiring graduation speech worthy of remembering. 

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Student Graduation Speech

Student graduation speech generator.

A graduation ceremony marks a pivotal moment, offering a blend of joy, nostalgia, and anticipation for the future. Crafting a memorable student graduation speech can be challenging, but it’s an opportunity to inspire and reflect. This comprehensive guide provides detailed insights and practical tips to help you create an impactful address. Filled with inspiring speech examples , it’s tailored to guide you through the process of composing a speech that resonates with your audience and leaves a lasting impression. Whether you’re seeking to inspire, reminisce, or motivate, our guide, complete with speech examples, is your go-to resource for delivering a message that captures the essence of this significant milestone.

What is a Student Graduation Speech? A Student Graduation Speech is a special talk given by a student during a graduation ceremony. It’s a moment where the student shares their experiences, celebrates achievements, and gives thanks to teachers, family, and friends. The speech often includes memories from school, lessons learned, and hopes for the future. It’s a way for the student to say goodbye to one chapter of their life and welcome the next with excitement and optimism. This speech is a memorable part of the graduation ceremony, marking the end of school and the beginning of a new journey.

In addition to that, a student graduation speech is also a good way to show or to tell students that they have finally achieved what they wanted in life. Basically the purpose of a student graduation speech is to make sure that each student knows what their professors and other students feel during this time. Graduation speeches can sometimes get very emotional, depending on who may be presenting the speech and how it was delivered. Often than not, it is considered normal for a lot of people to be very emotional when presenting a student graduation speech. To know about how to write one, let’s move on to how to write a good student graduation speech.

Download Student Graduation Speech Bundle

Download Graduation Speech Bundle

This is especially true for those who are graduating this year or for those who are going to be passing through and going forward. For students, this is the best day of their lives, the freedom, the path to choose what they can want and can get. However, when there is graduation, there is always that one thing students seem to not be able to escape. Making a graduation speech. Of course, a lot of students would say this is going to be easy now because of the practice they went through. But how do you make a good graduation speech? Where do you even begin? Am I confusing you? Don’t worry, I got you covered.

Student Graduation Speech Format

Introduction.

Greeting : Start with a warm welcome to guests, teachers, family, and fellow graduates. Personal Introduction : Briefly introduce yourself. Acknowledgment of the Occasion : Express the significance of the graduation day.

Reflections on the Journey : Share memorable experiences and lessons learned during school years. Memories : Highlight special moments and achievements. Challenges Overcome : Discuss obstacles faced and how they were overcome. Gratitude : Express thanks to teachers, family, and friends for their support. Current Feelings : Talk about emotions associated with graduating, like excitement, nostalgia, or anticipation for the future. Lessons Learned : Share valuable insights or life lessons gained during school years.

Future Outlook

Hopes and Dreams : Discuss aspirations and goals for the future. Call to Action : Encourage fellow graduates to pursue their dreams with determination and courage. Inspirational Message : Offer a motivational thought or quote to inspire the graduating class.

Closing Remarks : Summarize the key points of your speech. Final Thanks : Express gratitude to the audience for listening. Farewell Message : End with a heartfelt farewell, wishing everyone success in their future endeavors.

Best Graduation Speech

Ladies and Gentlemen, Honored Guests, Teachers, Family, and my Fellow Graduates,   Today marks a pivotal moment in our lives. As I stand here, I am overwhelmed with memories and emotions. Our journey through these halls has been nothing short of remarkable.   Firstly, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our dedicated teachers and school staff. Your unwavering support and guidance have been our guiding star. To our families, your love and sacrifices have shaped us into the individuals we are today. Your belief in our dreams has been our strongest foundation.   Looking back, our school years were filled with learning, not just from textbooks, but from every experience. We learned the value of friendship, the importance of hard work, and the power of perseverance. We celebrated victories, learned from our failures, and grew stronger with each challenge.   But today is not just about reminiscing. It’s about embracing the future. As we step out into the world, let’s carry the lessons and memories with us. Let’s approach the future with courage and optimism, ready to make our mark and create positive change.   In closing, I leave you with this thought: Let’s not just dream about the future; let’s be the architects of it. As we go forth, may we always remember where we came from and who we are. To my fellow graduates, congratulations! Our adventure begins now.   Thank You.

Student Graduation Speech [Text Version]

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed faculty members, distinguished guests, and beloved family and friends,   On this momentous occasion, I stand before you with a heart brimming with gratitude and excitement. As we gather here to celebrate our achievements, I am deeply humbled by the journey that has led us to this significant milestone.   Reflecting on our collective journey, it is undeniable that our relentless hard work, unwavering dedication, and steadfast perseverance have been the driving forces behind our success. Each step we’ve taken, every challenge we’ve faced, has molded us into the individuals we are today.   As we reminisce on the past years, let us cherish the memories we’ve created together. From late-night study sessions to unforgettable experiences shared, these moments have woven the fabric of our unique and remarkable journey as a graduating class.   Throughout our academic pursuits, we have not only gained knowledge but also nurtured personal and professional growth. The challenges we encountered along the way have been formidable, but through resilience and teamwork, we have emerged stronger and more determined than ever.   To our esteemed educators, mentors, and dedicated school staff, we owe a profound debt of gratitude. Your guidance, wisdom, and unwavering support have been instrumental in shaping our paths and fueling our aspirations.   To our cherished family members and friends, thank you for being our pillars of strength, unwavering sources of encouragement, and constant sources of love and support. Your belief in us has been our greatest motivation.   As we stand on the threshold of the future, let us embrace the infinite possibilities that lie ahead. Let us nurture our dreams, pursue our passions, and strive to make a positive impact on the world around us. Remember, learning is a lifelong journey, and our thirst for knowledge should never cease.   In the words of the great philosopher Aristotle, “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” Let us carry the lessons, memories, and friendships we’ve cultivated during our time here as we embark on the next chapter of our lives.   So, my fellow graduates, as we bid farewell to this chapter and step into the vast unknown, let us do so with courage, conviction, and unwavering determination. For the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.   Congratulations to the graduating class of [Year]! May our paths be filled with success, fulfillment, and endless possibilities. Thank you.

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How to Write a Student Graduation Speech?

Are you tasked to write a student graduation speech or are you simply curious as to how a student graduation speech looks and how it is written. Regardless of the reason, and if you are interested, here are some five simple tips to get you started on writing. How to write a student graduation speech?

1. Always Introduce Yourself to the Crowd

When you get up on that stage, thank the person who made the speech or who made the introduction first. Do this before reading your speech. It is seen as something polite and should be done. In addition to that, introduce yourself whether the person before you did or did not. Never assume that everyone in the crowd knows you. Remember, the people in the crowd are a mixture of students, your classmates, teachers, faculty and parents. There is only a few percent chance they can remember you or know you.

2. Share Your Experience in a Story

Another thing you can do when making a speech is to share your experience in the form of a story. Let your fellow graduates feel the same thing you felt or at least at some point. Tell your story so others could learn from your struggles and from the sweet rewards of graduating. Your experience may be different from others or may have at least a few things that are common, but your experience is there to awaken what it was like for students to struggle and feel the joy of a fruitful future. Think of how you would write your own  personal statement . But the difference is it is a speech than just a  short narrative essay .

3. Add an Inspiring Quote

One of the best ways to inspire and to get through your audience is to share an inspiring quote. Your quote must match that of your speech that you need not have to explain what it means. There are a lot of inspiring quotes, but you can also make your own.

4. Give Everyone Some Good Advice

Part of your speech should also be about giving people some good advice. Especially those students who may be graduating with you who are younger. Be the big person here and show them that with a lot of sacrifices, there will always be a rainbow after every thunderstorm. A brighter side of things. However, make it that they would find it good enough and not that they may get annoyed or disappointed. This means that when you say it, say it in a polite manner.

5. Thank Everyone for Attending the Event

Last but not the least, add graduation thank you speech to your graduation speech . Add this when you are about to end your speech. Showing that you appreciate the audience and the time they gave to attend the graduation. Saying this would mean that your speech is done and you would want everyone to be thankful for the people who came to the said event to watch.

How does a student start a graduation speech?

1.Express Gratitude:

Start by expressing gratitude to teachers, parents, mentors, and fellow students for their support and contributions throughout the academic journey. Thanking the audience creates a positive atmosphere from the beginning.

Example: “Good evening, honored guests, teachers, parents, and my amazing fellow graduates. I stand before you today with immense gratitude in my heart for the incredible support we’ve received on this journey.”

2. Use a Quote:

Begin with a relevant and inspiring quote that encapsulates the theme of the speech. Quotes can provide depth and immediately capture the audience’s attention.

Example: “As Nelson Mandela once said, ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ Today, we celebrate not just the end of our academic journey but the beginning of our mission to make a difference.”

3. Tell a Personal Story:

Share a brief, relatable personal anecdote that connects to the overarching message of the speech. Personal stories can create an emotional connection with the audience.

Example: “Allow me to take you back to the first day of school when we were wide-eyed freshmen, feeling a mix of excitement and nervousness. Little did we know that this place would become our second home, filled with laughter, challenges, and lifelong friendships.”

4. Ask a Rhetorical Question:

Pose a thought-provoking rhetorical question that engages the audience’s curiosity and encourages them to reflect on the journey ahead.

Example: “What does it truly mean to graduate? Is it merely receiving a diploma, or is it about the knowledge gained, the friendships formed, and the transformations within ourselves? Today, we contemplate not just our achievements but the infinite possibilities that lie before us.”

5. Use Humor:

Start with a light-hearted, witty remark or humorous anecdote related to the graduation experience. Humor can instantly capture the audience’s attention and create a warm atmosphere.

Example: “Ladies and gentlemen, if someone had told me four years ago that I would be standing here giving a speech, I would have thought they were joking. Yet, here I am, trying not to trip over my own excitement. Life truly is full of surprises!”

6. Acknowledge the Significance of the Moment:

Begin by acknowledging the importance of the graduation day, recognizing it as a pivotal moment in the students’ lives and the beginning of a new chapter.

Example: “Today is more than just a ceremony; it’s a milestone. It marks the culmination of years of hard work, late-night study sessions, and the unwavering determination that brought us to this moment. Today, we stand on the threshold of a future waiting to be shaped by our dreams and ambitions.”

What should I say in my high school graduation speech?

1. Introduction

Begin by expressing gratitude to the school, teachers, parents, and fellow students. Acknowledge the significance of the moment and the honor of addressing the graduating class.

2. Reflect on the Journey

Share personal reflections on your high school experience. Discuss memorable moments, challenges, and the growth you and your classmates have undergone.

3. Acknowledge Achievements

Recognize the accomplishments of your fellow graduates, including academic achievements, extracurricular activities, and personal growth.

4. Inspire and Encourage

Offer words of inspiration and encouragement to your peers as they embark on the next phase of their lives. Remind them of their potential and resilience.

5. Share Life Lessons

Reflect on the lessons learned during high school, both in and out of the classroom. Discuss how these lessons can be applied to the future.

6. Embrace Diversity:

Celebrate the diversity and unique qualities of your graduating class. Highlight the importance of inclusivity and understanding in a diverse world.

7. Discuss the Future:

Talk about the exciting possibilities and challenges that await graduates as they move on to college, careers, or other pursuits.

8. Express Hope and Optimism:

Convey optimism for the future, emphasizing the potential for positive change and personal growth. Inspire your peers to make a difference in the world.

9. Use Personal Anecdotes:

Share personal stories or anecdotes that connect with the audience and convey your messages effectively.

10. Conclude with Gratitude:

Thank your audience once again for the privilege of speaking and express your optimism about the future.

How do you write a short and sweet graduation speech?

• Start with Gratitude: Begin by expressing gratitude to the school, teachers, parents, and fellow graduates for the support and experiences throughout the journey.
• Acknowledge Achievements: Recognize the accomplishments and milestones of your graduating class, both academic and personal.
• Reflect on the Journey: Share a brief reflection on your high school experience, mentioning memorable moments and challenges.
• Inspire and Encourage: Offer a concise message of inspiration and encouragement for your peers as they step into the next chapter of their lives. Encourage them to pursue their dreams and make a positive impact.
• Express Hope: Convey optimism and hope for the future, highlighting the potential for success and personal growth.
• Use a Memorable Quote: Consider incorporating a well-chosen quote that encapsulates the theme of your speech.
• Engage the Audience: Use eye contact, a confident tone, and gestures to engage the audience. Maintain a warm and inclusive atmosphere.
• Stay True to Your Voice: Keep your speech authentic and true to your personality and values.

Here’s an example of a short and sweet graduation speech:

“Good evening, honored guests, teachers, parents, and my fellow graduates. As we stand here today on the brink of a new journey, I want to express my gratitude for the experiences and support we’ve shared throughout our high school years. Our achievements, both big and small, have brought us to this moment, and I couldn’t be prouder to call you my classmates. As we move forward, remember that every challenge we faced and overcame has shaped us into the individuals we are today. We are ready to embrace the future with open hearts and unwavering determination. As Dr. Seuss once said, ‘You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.’

Is it necessary to make a graduation speech?

Some schools require their outstanding graduates to make a graduation speech, while others may not require them. The whole purpose of the speech is to let everyone know that they have done great and should continue to do great things.

What are the elements of a good graduation speech?

The introduction where you are going to be talking about the reason you are here. The body which will be about telling a story, an anecdote, sharing of experiences and hope for the future. It is also the part where you give way to inspire others to keep on pushing their dreams. The conclusion where you give thanks and congratulate on everyone for achieving.

What are the benefits of writing a graduation speech?

The benefits of writing a graduation speech is the opportunity to say thank you and welcome at the same time. To give everyone the opportunity to say we made it in one simple but grand speech. Making a graduation speech is the written and oral way of showing the world that you have made it and will continue to make it.

Why do we need a graduation speech example?

Sometimes, the process of making the perfect speech outline involves long nights and a lot of crumpled papers. We’re either experiencing major writer’s block or we’re just absolutely clueless on what to talk about. Regardless, writing a good speech is not an easy job. Sometimes, we just need a little guidance to get started. This is when references serve their purpose.

How long is a graduation speech?

A graduation speech does not have to be too long nor too short. A single page is enough to make a speech. If the speech is too long, your audience may fall asleep or choose to ignore as it may drag. But if the speech is too short, it may leave an awkward air around the whole event. Make sure that your speech should not last more than five minutes nor less than that.

Graduation speeches can either get very emotional or can be made as a polite way to say thank you. Depending on who writes it and how it is written. It is normal to cry when you’re doing your speech, but it is not okay to not make any eye contact.

Graduation speeches are more than just words; they are the encapsulation of an educational journey, filled with challenges, achievements, and invaluable lessons. They are a platform to inspire, encourage, and impart wisdom to fellow graduates and the audience. As you craft your speech, remember the impact of your words can extend beyond the ceremony, leaving a lasting impression on your listeners. To further explore inspiring examples and advice on crafting impactful graduation speeches, consider visiting the American Institute for Economic Research for a unique perspective on graduation speeches here and the University of Chicago for a collection of student graduation speeches here. These resources offer additional insights and inspiration that can enhance your speechwriting process.

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

Ideas for a student graduation speech on achieving dreams

Writing a powerful student graduation speech on perseverance

Student Graduation Speaker Speech

What should a student say in a graduation speech?

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Middle School or Elementary School graduation speech

This page contains a funny sample speech for Middle School or Elementary School graduations for principles, teachers or other key note speakers. The speech template can be customized for graduations from preschool, 8th Grade, Junior High School, clubs, high school or other graduation events as well. This speech is humorous but also talks about dedication and personal commitment. We hope this graduation speech for keynote or guest speakers is helpful.

School graduation speech

Let me begin by welcoming all of you to today’s event and thanking (NAME OF PERSON WHO INTRODUCED YOU) for that kind introduction.

I’m very pleased to have been invited to speak here today on what I know is a very special day. It’s special for the graduates, for their proud parents and grandparents, and for their very relieved teachers. Just wait until these students are graduating college. Then their parents will be the

relieved ones.

As I begin, I have to say, I think the best speeches are those that have a great beginning, a memorable end, and not much in between. I will try then to make a great speech. Today is one of those great occasions when we get to celebrate our young people – their achievements, their perseverance and their successes as they grow up. It’s one of the times you can take a break and reflect, feeling good as a parent or a mentor, knowing that the kids you care about are doing just fine and they’re on the right path.

Graduates, you should know that your moms and dads are very proud of you today. They have high hopes for you, and they believe in you, and you are making them proud by showing what you can do. Take a look at them now, and you can see them smiling and snapping photos so they can record this moment forever. Today is an important day for you and for them. Today they are very, very proud of you. (PAUSE) Today would be a good day to ask for money.

Today would also be a good day to hug them and thank them for supporting you, because as much as this is your achievement, this is also the achievement of the people who care about you. That means your mom, your dad, your step mom or step dad, your grandparents, your sisters and brothers, and all the other people who care about you. They want you to be your best and to live up to your potential.

Graduations can be seen as a coming of age, a sort of official way to recognize when a person steps into the next stage of life, and graduates, you are stepping into a new stage.

With every year, you have become a little more independent. I bet you can still remember your first day here - it might have been exciting and a little intimidating too. I bet when you look at the (INSERT LOWEST GRADE IN SCHOOL HERE, 1ST GRADERS, 6TH GRADERS, ETC) going to class you think, Wow! They look so little! I can't believe I was ever that young! Get used to it. You'll be thinking that for the rest of your life.

But when you she younger students, you can tell how much you've grown up, how much you've learned and how much you've matured. Think back on some of the exciting things that happened this year, all the things you learned. This year, you… (ADD SOME INFO ABOUT THE CLASS OR SCHOOL HERE. TALK TO TEACHERS OR WHOEVER INVITED YOU FOR SOME IDEAS. IT CAN BE FIELD TRIPS, TOPICS STUDENTS LEARNED, ETC. YOU CAN ALSO ADD SOME FAMILY-FRIENDLY HUMOR ABOUT WHAT KIDS LEARNED).

You had some great time this year, and maybe you had some tough times, but you did it and you succeeded. You're ready for that next step. I ask you as you prepare for this next step to do a few things.

First, stop texting your friend about how you wish the speaker would hurry up and finish talking so you could go to (INSERT NAME OF LOCAL PARTY PLACE, MALL OR RESTAURANT POPULAR WITH STUDENTS).

Secondly, I ask you to take this chance to dedicate yourself to making the next year even better. Remember that you don’t have to follow the crowd. Do the right thing, even if no one is looking. Study hard and remember that you're investing in yourself with every test you take and every book you read. And finally, don't be in too big of a hurry to grow up. These are some great times in your life. Don't rush past them.

There are great things coming, and just as your parents are proud, each one of you should feel proud of yourself.

So congratulations to all of the graduates, congratulations to the parents, and finally, congrats to the teachers and everyone else who helped our graduates reach here today.

I'll leave you with this final quote, from a great author with whom I imagine you are all familar, by the name of Dr. Seuss.

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go."

Congratulations again, and thank you for your attention.

Did you like this sample speech for Middle School and Elementary School Graduation? We hope you can use it for your speech, whether you are a principle, a teacher or a guest speaker.

Since you were interested in this sample speech about graduations, chances are you will like the following topics as well: High School Graduation speech and Easy Letter of Recommendation template

More information : We hope this page was helpful and provided you with some information about Middle School or Elementary School graduation speech . Check out our main page for more articles here Can U Write .

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Home » Ideas » 51 Best Graduation Speech Ideas (Serious, Funny, etc.)

51 Best Graduation Speech Ideas (Serious, Funny, etc.)

Presenting a graduation speech is both exciting and a bit terrifying. You are both the first and last high school voice many in your audience will hear. You will be speaking to your fellow graduates, parents, teachers, and extended family members, so your speech must be understandable to everyone. You need to engage your listeners immediately and share a speech that is both enjoyable and informative. To be successful, you must remember that the key to creating a graduation speech that is both memorable and enjoyable is preparation. We will walk you through the process, discussing the different types of graduation speeches, how to pick a theme for your graduation speech, and how to write and deliver your graduation speech.

Table of Contents

Types of Graduation Speeches

You probably will not be the only speaker to take the podium. When it is your turn, you want your speech to grab your audience’s attention and keep it. Think about the last few years of your schooling, the general personality of your class members, and what makes your educational experience unique. Graduation speeches can be divided into several different categories:

Serious Graduation Speeches

Inspirational graduation speeches, funny graduation speeches.

Begin by brainstorming about your experience in school, asking the question: What has my school experience taught me and my fellow students about life, facing problems, and growing up? Then consider choosing one of the following upon which to base your speech:

Life Lessons

Students do not only learn subject matter in school. School teaches one how to relate to others, that hard work leads to success, and that you get the most out of any endeavor if you give it 100%. Some good speech ideas if you wish to talk about life lessons are:

• The Most Important Lesson I Learned in School
• Let’s Remain Lifelong Friends
• The Importance of Taking Risks

Facing and Overcoming Problems

Simply talking about the problems your graduating class has encountered leads to a depressing speech but recounting how those problems were overcome can be inspiring and uplifting. You may have lost a beloved teacher or fellow student, had an extreme weather experience that damaged the school, or had fundraisers for much needed supplies and equipment. Consider the following speech topics if you wish to talk about overcoming adversity.

• Never Give Up!
• Learn from Your Mistakes
• Remember This?

High school graduation frequently is the beginning of adulthood. Maturity involves being able to make good decisions, accepting responsibility, and being willing to be held accountable for our actions. Making comparisons about how you and your classmates behaved as freshmen and the changes you have made now that you are seniors makes for an interesting and fun graduation speech. Some speech ideas that deal with maturity are:

• Be Yourself
• Facing the Next Big Challenge

You may decide the best speech for your audience is one that will inspire them. You can move your audience to have an emotional response with one of the following:

• Reflections and Memoirs Looking back on your high school years and the changes you and your classmates have been through is an excellent way to create a speech that perfectly ends your high school years.
• Expression of Gratitude Thanking your parents, teachers, friends, and family members for support and assistance throughout your education careers can end with a standing ovation. Additionally, you may wish to have graduates present a flower to the person who helped them the most.
• Inspiring Quote Beginning your speech with an inspirational quote from a famous person or even a Bible verse can set the tone for your speech and provide a coherent theme.
• Song Lyric If you and your classmates have a popular song that most of you know and love, use some of the lyrics to create your theme. You might wish to quote the lyrics at the beginning of your speech and then close by playing a few verses for your audience
• Inspiring Story Use a popular media story or a few about inspiring class members, maybe one or two that overcame an obstacle to be successful.
• Anecdotes and Stories about Your Class Sharing some funny and serious stories about your class members sets the foundation for a fun speech. Just make sure the stories are uplifting and do not cause anyone embarrassment. The goal is to show how bonded your class has become.
• Student Accomplishments If you have one or more students or a sports team that made an impact on the school, sharing their accomplishments can provide a truly inspirational speech. Emphasize how their accomplishments strengthened the entire class.

If you are known for your sense of humor, you may wish to try a humorous graduation speech. Humor is never boring, if you have the talent for delivering this type of speech. Consider using one of the following approaches:

• Pick Appropriate Jokes Sprinkling a few jokes throughout your speech can keep your audience’s attention and provide a bit of humor. Consider some takes on why the chicken crossed the road or some silly knock-knock jokes.
• Use Funny Inspirational Quotes A quick google search for funny inspirational quotes will provide fodder for your topic. You could reminisce about your class after quoting, “Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.” (Abraham Lincoln)
• Use Irony Reference something surprising, such as a popular song, movie, or activity. For example, “Life Is Like a Monopoly Game.”
• Tell a Funny Story Specific to Your School Make sure your story is audience appropriate and they will relate to it. Telling a story about yourself, perhaps about a time in school when you failed, can provide humor.
• Poke Fun at the “Traditional” Graduation Speech Although it can be difficult to write, if done well, this speech is very funny. Use some of the clichés such as “dream big,” “never give up,” and “you are the future” as a springboard for your humorous speech. Speak slowly and distinctly, so that your audience can here every word. If people are laughing, stop talking for minute. You want your audience to have an opportunity to respond to your humor.

Graduation Speech Themes

Your graduation speech theme will help you tie all your ideas together. Your speech should last at least five minutes, but not longer than ten to twelve. Keep this in mind as you brainstorm ideas to pick a theme for your speech. Below we have listed some common graduation speech themes that have worked well for others. Remember that no matter which theme you choose, you can make your speech unique with personalized content – content that your audience can relate to.

• Who Are You?
• Believe in Yourself
• Be an Original, Not a Carbon Copy
• Step Up and Out
• Striving on to Perfection
• Learn from Other’s Mistakes
• Live in the Moment
• You Are What You Believe
• What I Learned in High School
• What Comes Next?
• Take a Leap of Faith
• Our Class United When
• Set Goals for Success
• Giving Back
• Follow Your Dreams
• High School Mistakes I Learned From
• Why I Don’t Want to Leave High School
• My Best High School Memories
• Overcoming Obstacles
• The Importance of School
• Never Stop Learning

8th Grade Graduation Speech

If you are in middle school and have been chosen to present an 8th grade graduation speech, keep your speech simple and short – not longer than five minutes – and follow the following format:

• Greet the audience.
• Introduce yourself.
• Reflect on your time in middle school highlighting a few special moments.
• Talk a bit about future expectations for your class.
• Thank your teachers, fellow students, and parents.
• Conclude your speech with a quote, Bible verse, or line from a song or poem.

High School Graduation Speech

Giving the high school commencement speech is truly an honor. If you are chosen to represent your classmates, choose a theme that reflects your personality and one you feel comfortable addressing because you know your topic well. Make sure you practice before the big occasion and memorize as much of your speech as possible. Have clear notes with you in case you forget something. Use engaging gestures, look at your audience, and speak in a slow, yet natural, pace.

Get your audiences attention with a quotation, anecdote, or a clever joke. Make sure your theme is clear and that all your content is cohesive and concise. Illustrate your theme with a story or example, reminiscing about the times you and your classmates enjoyed.

A high school graduation speech should last about ten minutes. Close your speech by thanking your audience; fellow students, parents, and teachers. Tie together the points you have presented during your speech and end with a clever statement your audience will remember.

How to Write a Graduation Speech?

Writing your graduation speech will be much easier if you have a plan. Our step-by-step guide on how to write a graduation speech will walk you through the entire process.

• Brainstorm Ideas Begin by brainstorming ideas. Think about the future and what kind of challenges you and your fellow students may face after graduation. Consider your past school experiences, concentrating on those which are unique and interesting.
• Pick a Theme Your theme may become obvious as you list your brainstorming ideas. If not, check out the list of themes we have suggested and pick one that fits your experiences and personality.
• Stick with Your Theme. Do not allow yourself to include anything in your speech not related to your theme. Find a quote, song lyrics, or a popular news story related to your theme if you wish to include one.
• Build the Basic Structure of Your Speech After identifying the theme of your speech, begin to organize your speech by creating an outline: Welcome Introduce Topic (Theme) Give Example, Testimonial, or Tell a Story or Joke Add Originality Conclusion Thank Your Audience Leave Them with a One Line Summation

Delivering Your Graduation Speech

Once you have completed your graduation speech, you are ready to prepare for delivering it. Find out when on the program you will be speaking so you will be ready. Knowing if you are first, last, or somewhere in the middle of the program can help you feel more comfortable about delivering your speech. Adhere to all the following suggestions to make sure your speech is the best it can be.

• Memorize Your Speech Reading your speech can destroy the delivery, making you sound robotic and impersonal. You will probably want to have some notes but try to speak as much as possible from memory.
• Time Your Speech You may be told how long you have for your speech. If not, try not to talk no more than about ten minutes; a longer speech may not keep your listeners’ attention.
• Speak Slowly When one is nervous, they speak faster. Try to speak slowly and enunciate each word. Pause when necessary for an audience response to a joke or funny comment.
• Speak with Emotion Vary your tone of voice and match your emotions with your content.
• Make Eye Contact Look at your audience. If doing so makes you nervous, pick a spot on the wall at the back of the room and look at it as you speak. You can also pick out a few people in the audience you know and make eye contact with them.

Before you deliver your speech, practice, practice, practice! Deliver your speech to your family, the mirror, your dog – anyone that will listen. Ask for advice and take it. When you give your speech, if you make a mistake, repeat the sentence or word and keep going. Smile at your audience when appropriate. Your enthusiasm for your subject will be felt and enjoyed.

Finally, remember to have pictures or a video taken while you are giving your speech. You have earned the privilege of speaking for your entire class – a huge responsibility and one you will remember for years to come. Smile, have fun, and your audience will enjoy and remember your graduation speech.

Susan majored in English with a double minor in Humanities and Business at Arizona State University and earned a Master’s degree in Educational Administration from Liberty University. She taught grades four through twelve in both public and private schools. Subjects included English, U.S. and world history and geography, math, earth and physical science, Bible, information technologies, and creative writing.

Susan has been freelance writing for over ten years, during which time she has written and edited books, newspaper articles, biographies, book reviews, guidelines, neighborhood descriptions for realtors, Power Point presentations, resumes, and numerous other projects.

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21 Best Graduation Speeches That Everyone Should Hear

Read life advice from Ree Drummond, Bill Gates, Oprah, and more!

Included in this list is the Pioneer Woman herself—Ree Drummond has witnessed her fair share of milestones with the Drummond kids and to top it off, she delivered an iconic keynote address at Oklahoma State University . Of course, who could forget Oprah Winfrey's speech to the class of 2020? In this heartfelt and emotional address, Winfrey encourages graduates to find their purpose in life and make a difference in the world. Those two are just a taste of what's to come. So, turn on the graduation songs , grab your tissues, and get ready for some solid life advice. Whether you're a recent graduate or just in need of a little pick-me-up, these speeches are sure to leave you feeling inspired and ready to take on whatever life throws your way.

Bill Gates: Northern Arizona University, 2023

Despite famously dropping out of Harvard after two years of study, Bill Gates shared a few pieces of advice he says he could have used at his hypothetical graduation. The Microsoft founder emphasized the importance of being open to career changes and learning to take a break.

"You are not a slacker if you cut yourself some slack. When I was your age, I didn’t believe in vacations. I didn’t believe in weekends. I pushed everyone around me to work very long hours. In the early days of Microsoft, my office overlooked the parking lot—and I would keep track of who was leaving early and staying late. But as I got older—and especially once I became a father—I realized there is more to life than work. Don’t wait as long as I did to learn this lesson. Take time to nurture your relationships, to celebrate your successes, and to recover from your losses."

Ree Drummond: Oklahoma State University, 2022

Ree hardly needs an introduction, but she knows a thing or two about life as a published author, Food Network host, and most importantly, mother of five.

"Buckle up, you have good times and rough seas ahead. It is just part of life, but enjoy the ride and laugh a lot... Life is about to unfold for you in all its forms. Love, heartache, accomplishments, disappointment, testing of faith... life is beautiful, so I repeat, buckle up and laugh along the way. It makes life fun."

Hamdi Ulukaya: Northeastern University, 2022

You may not know his name, but you might just love Chobani, the hugely successful yogurt brand Hamdi started. He reminded graduates why we are here on earth.

"As we started to grow, we hired everyone that we could. I realized an hour away there was a community of refugees who were having a hard time finding jobs. I said, 'Let's hire them.' I promise you that there is nothing more rewarding than showing up in the world for other people, no matter how hard it may be."

Dr. Marie Lynn Miranda: University of Notre Dame, 2021

As obvious as it sounds, you don't know what you don't know. That's the lesson from this acclaimed Notre Dame professor and environmental researcher.

"As much as I want to highlight the importance of the expertise you have developed, I also want to make the point that you will face situations in the years ahead where you will have no relevant expertise; you will have no evidence base to rely upon; your intellect will not be able to supply a needed answer. In those situations, I would like to suggest that you respond with love."

Oprah Winfrey: Class of 2020 Virtual Speech

Oprah had one of the hardest commencement speeches to give: it was for the class that graduated during the pandemic. She found a profound lesson in the chaos of those early months.

"Look who turns out to be essential! Teachers—your teachers!—healthcare workers of course, the people stocking grocery shelves, the cashiers, those who are caring for your grandparents, those who clean the places where we work and shop and carry out our daily lives. We are all here because they, at great and profound risk, are still providing their essential service. What will your essential service be? What really matters to you? How will you use what matters in service to yourself, your community, and the world?"

Tim Cook: Tulane University, 2019

Tim Cook took a similar approach to his late co-worker Steve Jobs when it came to the theme of his graduation speech.

"There's a saying that if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. At Apple, I learned that's a total crock. You'll work harder than you ever thought possible, but the tools will feel light in your hands. As you go out into the world, don't waste time on problems that have been solved... Look for the rough spots, the problems that seem too big, the complexities that other people are content to work around. It's in those places that you will find your purpose. It's there that you can make your greatest contribution."

Ken Burns: Stanford University, 2016

In his 2016 Stanford speech, America's most famous documentary filmmaker asked listeners not to forget the lessons found in our history.

"Be for something. Be curious, not cool. Feed your soul, too. Every day. Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all. Don't confuse success with excellence. Educate all of your parts. You will be healthier. Seek out—and have—mentors. Listen to them. Bite off more than you can chew. Do not get stuck in one place. Visit our national parks. Their sheer majesty may remind you of your own 'atomic insignificance,' as one observer noted, but in the inscrutable ways of nature, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard. Insist on heroes. And be one."

Sheryl Sandberg: UC Berkeley, 2016

The former COO of Facebook offered graduates a realistic look at the life ahead and how to move through the hard times. "Some of you have already experienced the kind of tragedy and hardship that leave an indelible mark. The question is not if some of these things will happen to you. They will. Today I want to talk about what happens next. The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days—the times that challenge you to your very core—that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve but by how you survive."

Admiral William H. McRaven: University of Texas at Austin, 2014

During Admiral McRaven's speech at his alma mater, he looked to the lessons he learned serving his country. One of which was so simple, yet profoundly impactful.

"If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter... And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better."

George Saunders: Syracuse University, 2013

Bestselling author and professor George Saunders offered grads a guiding principle to move through life with, no matter what they pursue.

"Travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop)—but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality—your soul, if you will—is as bright and shining as any that has ever been."

Kerry Washington: George Washington University, 2013

Actress Kerry Washington told graduates to think of this achievement during the difficult or uncomfortable parts of life.

"The lesson is that you're here because you too learned how to answer the call. You don't earn a degree by doing and being and existing in the comfort zone of what you already know. Look back on the journey that brought you here. What moments challenged you most? When were you asked to step outside of your familiar territory in order to rise to the occasion of your potential? I want you to remember those moments, because they will embolden you."

Neil Gaiman: University of the Arts, 2012

Neil wasn't always an acclaimed author of fiction, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, and films. His speech may have been given to a group of young artists, but the advice applies to anyone starting out in a turbulent career.

"People who know what they are doing know the rules, and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that particular thing again."

Aaron Sorkin: Syracuse University, 2012

Aaron has carved an incredible career writing plays, movies, and television shows, but success clearly hasn't impacted his sense of humility.

"Decisions are made by those who show up. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day: civility, respect, kindness, character."

Atul Gawande: Williams College, 2012

Being a surgeon means you have to think on your feet when things go wrong, and for Dr. Gawande, that holds an immense life lesson.

"A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it. Will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right? Because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue."

Conan O'Brien: Dartmouth College, 2011

This famous late-night host delivered a hilarious graduation speech riddled with stories, each with their own lesson.

"David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson and was not, and as a result, my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are—my peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this: It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound re-invention."

Steve Jobs: Stanford University, 2005

The entrepreneur, inventor, and pioneer of the personal computer revolution had his fair share of ups and downs in life. But one of the things that made him so persistent was his love of technology.

"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

Toni Morrison: Wellesley College, 2004

Toni Morrison disputed the usual platitude that youth is the best time of your life. Instead, she told students that there is nothing more satisfying or gratifying than the true adulthood which stretches out before them. "What is now known is not all that you are capable of knowing. You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox. And although you don't have complete control over the narrative (no author does, I can tell you), you could nevertheless create it."

Bill Gates: Harvard University, 2007

Who wouldn't take the Microsoft founder's advice?

"In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue—a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don't have to do that to make an impact... don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on big inequities. I feel sure it will be one of the great experiences of your lives."

Nora Ephron: Wellesley College, 1996

When Nora Ephron wasn't reporting, she was writing some of our most beloved romantic comedies. She reassured grads that they will always continue to change and grow.

"What are you going to do? Everything is my guess. It will be a little messy but embrace the mess. It will be complicated but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it's going to be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened. You can always change your mind. I know. I've had four careers and three husbands. And this is something else I want to tell you, one of the hundreds of things I didn't know when I was sitting here so many years ago: you are not going to be you, fixed and immutable you, forever."

Barbara Kingsolver: DePauw University, 1994

The sentiment of Barbara Kingsolver's speech resonates today just as much as it did in 1994.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and give you one little piece of advice and that is like the idea of a future. Believe you have it in you to make the world look better rather than worse seven generations from now. Figure out what that could look like. And then if you're lucky, you'll find a way to live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides."

Micaela Bahn is a freelance editorial assistant and recent graduate from Carleton College, where she majored in English literature. She loves running, photography, and cooking the best new recipes.

Nitya Rao is the editorial assistant at The Pioneer Woman, covering stories ranging from food, fashion, beauty, lifestyle, news, and more.

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Roger Federer’s Graduation Speech Becomes an Online Hit

At Dartmouth College, the retired tennis champion offered his thoughts on winning and losing.

By Steven Kurutz

There are thousands of commencement addresses on college campuses each spring. Most are unremarkable and go unremarked upon. But occasionally one gets people talking and gains traction online. That was the case with the speech given by the retired tennis champion Roger Federer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., on June 9.

Mr. Federer, who left school in his native Switzerland at 16 to play professionally, noted early in his remarks that he was not an obvious choice for a commencement speaker.

“Keep in mind, this is literally the second time I have ever set foot on a college campus,” he told the more than 2,000 graduates.

After some warm-up jokes about beer pong (which is said to have been invented at a Dartmouth fraternity party) and a few shout-outs to local institutions (“I got a chance to hit some balls with my kids at the Boss Tennis Center … I also crushed some chocolate chip cookies from Foco ”), Mr. Federer got down to business and offered the graduates some tennis lessons that doubled as life lessons.

The part of the speech that has caught on with audiences far beyond the Ivy League environs of the Dartmouth campus — prompting numerous TikTok videos , many of them set to inspirational string music — was his reframing of his years of dominance on the tennis court.

“In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80 percent of those matches,” Mr. Federer said. “Now, I have a question for all of you. What percentage of the points do you think I won in those matches?”

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Graduation Speeches Everyone Needs to Hear—Not Just New Grads

A couple of commencement speeches, viewed by millions, stand out from the rest..

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Commencement speeches run the gamut from instantly forgotten to landmark addresses. Many of us long ago let slip from memory the words spoken from the podium at our high school or college graduation.

Other commencement speeches may deeply connect with graduates and their loved ones and friends but have little impact outside the doors of the auditoriums or gymnasiums where they were delivered.

“Whatever game you choose,” he said in conclusion, “give it your best. Go for your shots. Play free. Try everything. And most of all, be kind to one another—and have fun out there.”

And then there are those rare occasions when a commencement speaker not only touches the hearts of the graduates, but also captivates millions of others looking for inspiration and guidance.

Harry Potter at Harvard

At the beginning of her speech, she said, “I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today.” Ms. Rowling wisely restricted herself to two principal themes: the benefits of failure and the power of the imagination. For the former, she looked back at her life following her departure from college, saying: “A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.”

Oddly enough, that cascade of failures freed her to follow her childhood ambition and write novels.

“My greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea,“ she said. ”And so, rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” The knowledge that she could fail, grow stronger, and gain self-confidence made her secure in her ability to survive and to move forward.

The meaning of Ms. Rowling’s second theme, the power of the imagination, extended far beyond her ability to tell stories beloved by millions. Of imagination, she said that “in its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.” Ms. Rowling found her own powers of imagination and empathy woven together during her time working for Amnesty International in London, where she encountered horror stories of oppression and torture in other lands.

‘Up to Your Neck in Mud’

“If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right,” he said.

In the rest of the speech, he covered nine more points illustrated by examples from his SEAL training. Comparing the skills of the bigger men with the smaller, he underscored the superior abilities of the “munchkin crew” who “outpaddled, outran, and outswam all the other boat crews.” The lesson?

“SEAL training was a great equalizer,“ he said. ”Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education, not your social status. If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.”

Failure to meet standards, Adm. McRaven told his audience, meant a “circus” for the offender, two hours of grueling physical exercise at the end of the already arduous day, but “the pain of the circuses built inner strength and physical resiliency.” Such circuses occur frequently in life, the admiral told his audience, and you can build your own store of courage and strength by facing up to them even “when you’re up to your neck in mud.”

Since then, Adm. McRaven’s speech has been viewed more than 19 million times.

Most important of all, however, their message touched hearts and minds. Learn from failure. Never give up. Take risks. Show empathy. Aim high, work hard, and do your best.

We humans need to hear these old verities again and again, yet this workaday wisdom is so familiar that it might fall on deaf ears, inspiring boredom rather than enthusiasm. These two speakers gave their listeners a renewed appreciation of virtue, ambition, and effort.

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J.K. Rowling concluded by returning to one of these old ideas:

“Even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

“‘As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.’

“I wish you all very good lives.”

A final note: Many of you readers have a child, a grandchild, or a young friend who graduated from high school or college this spring. Consider sharing the remarks of Ms. Rowling and Adm. McRaven with them. Better yet, give those young people your own graduation talk. What wisdom can you share with your 22-year-old daughter to ease her path into the broader world? What advice can help your 17-year-old grandson make his way into the future?

Speak to them. Who knows? Your words might change the world for the better.

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