Top 1200 Commencement Speech Quotes & Sayings

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

My company has no intention of deleting constitutionally protected hate speech. I feel the remedy for this type of speech is counter speech, and I'm certain that this is the view of the American justice system.

One of the panelists on CNN, after the Hillary Clinton commencement speech, literally started crying, "I can't believe, I can't believe the election actually happened and she lost." I don't need to see that. I don't need to see a bunch of whimpering leftists who themselves are incapable of grounding themselves in reality, whining and moaning.

My daughter went to the school, and it's a very, very progressive and liberal school, and my commencement speech was telling the kids just to always be willing to quit, and that they need to quit a lot in their lives, and keep on quitting, because all the happiness I've ever got was when I turned my back on things that everybody else thought would make you happy. I can smell parents' stomach acid right now, but they know that whole "You gotta get a job and you gotta settle for what people perceive as success" thing is really absurd.

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

The whole point of a commencement speech is to say something encouraging.

Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of Truth is useful; without free speech progress is checked, and the nations no longer march forward towards the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day; but the denial stays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.

The question I have is out of all these commencement speeches that are happening, what`s the really worthwhile advice that a 21, 22 year old person will walk away from the speech and say, I can apply this maybe five years, 10 years later. How many speeches actually push the button like that, other than yours?

Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like.

Because of the free speech clause in the First Amendment, which is very clear, "The government shall make no law abridging freedom of speech," and it literally is about political speech. You can say anything you want about politics, a candidate, and the government cannot stop you. And the Democrats hate that.

Silence is never-ending speech. Vocal speech obstructs the other speech of silence. In silence one is in intimate contact with the surroundings. Language is only a medium for communicating one's thoughts to another. Silence is ever speaking.

By the time Clinton graduated from Yale Law School, many people, including her boyfriend Bill, believed she could, and should, embark on a political career. She'd given the Wellesley commencement speech that had earned her a 'Life' write-up of her own.

I really believed Obama when he spoke in 2008, but I remember watching his victory speech after this last election and it was the same speech. Exactly the same speech. I felt like he didn't even believe it anymore. He seemed to be tired of saying the same thing.

Very often in free speech cases you find yourself defending material that you personally detest, because of course it's no trick to defend the free speech of people you either agree with or who don't particularly upset you. It's when people really upset you that you discover if you believe in free speech or not.

Commencement Day has a sobering finality in that it's the end of the prescribed path.

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

And the commencement of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

Commencement addresses are usually garbage. They're for colleges seeking publicity.

Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech.

I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?

I did work well with Hillary Clinton when she was my colleague in the Senate, and I certainly don't bear her any ill will. But when I listened carefully to her commencement speech, what I heard was a laundry list of very expensive new programs that our country simply cannot afford, and that would add to our already overwhelming $17 trillion debt. I'm also disturbed by the mismatch in her answers to the questions about her e-mail server and what the FBI Director Comey says that the FBI's investigation found.

He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe.

George W. Bush gave a commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. It was pretty inspirational. He said, 'As I like to tell the 'C' students, you too can be president.' Even George W. Bush has George W. Bush comedy material in his act.

Student loan debt is certainly not a fitting topic for a commencement speech, but it's an issue we must confront - not only for thousands of college graduates who deserve a fair shot, but also for our economy.

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. A very inspirational speech. Apparently Bush told the students, 'You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.'

Free speech is important whether you like what's being said or not. The reason why it's so important is that the entire spectrum of ideas needs to be heard so that the best ones are embraced and rise to the top. If you're a liberal and don't like conservative speech and you try to stifle that conservative speech, you need to be prepared for your own progressive speech to be stifled when the power shifts out of your favor.

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.

If you're offended, what the Supreme Court has said the answer to speech you do not like is not less speech, it's more speech. There are many people in America who don't get that.

The fountain is my speech. The tulips are my speech. The grass and trees are my speech.

Zealous in the commencement, careless in the end.

Democratization is not democracy; it is a slogan for the temporary liberalization handed down from an autocrat. Glasnost is not free speech; only free speech, constitutionally guaranteed, is free speech.

Advocates of 'free speech' often repeat the mantra that the best response to bad speech is more and better speech, not the suppression of the bad stuff.

'Free speech' isn't speech at all if it's being used without listening, attention, or care.

Action hangs, as it were, dissolved in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.

I was playing Russell Long, the senator from Louisiana. I had 12 speech teachers watching me. All the other passengers on the airplane were speech teachers, and every time I got it wrong, one of the speech teachers would jump up and correct it.

Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing more.

The radicals...want speech regulated by codes that proscribe certain language. They see free speech as at best a delusion, at worst a threat to the welfare of minorities and women....The most obvious (and cynical) explanation for the switched positions is the switched situations. Protesting students became established professors and administrators. For outsiders, free speech is bread and butter; for insiders, indigestion. To the new academics, unregulated free speech spells trouble.

To me, freedom of speech and debate are necessary inputs in solving any of our nation's problems, from homelessness and economic inequality to banking, the environment, and national security. Freedom of speech is what Larry Lessig would call a 'root' issue; working on free speech is striking at a root issue.

I indeed had only one scene, one speech, one little speech, but it was with Robin Williams.

Antonin Scalia knows that freedom of speech has consequences. And the consequences of freedom of speech are speech you don't like, that you don't want to hear, that you don't want to listen to.

The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.

I did the commencement speech at UNH in 2006, and one of the biggest jokes was a 'Guts' joke.

It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.

There's actually a wonderful quote from Stanley Fish, who is sometimes very polemical and with whom I don't always agree. He writes, "Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right."

To make a commencement requires a mental effort.

It is the beginning of the end. [Fr., C'est le commencement de al fin.]

Speak only endearing speech, speech that is welcomed. Speech, when it brings no evil to others, is pleasant.

The first time I spoke to a group this large was at my college commencement in 1969.

The intelligent defense of free speech should not rest on the notion that we must tolerate every form of speech, no matter how offensive. It's that we should lean toward greater tolerance for speech we dislike, and reserve our harshest penalties only for the worst offenders.

In most Western democracies, you do have the freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not an entitlement to reach. You are free to say what you want, within the confines of hate speech, libel law and so on. But you are not entitled to have your voice artificially amplified by technology.

Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right.

Our job isn't to defend freedom of speech, but without freedom of speech we are dead. We can't live in a country without freedom of speech. I prefer to die than live like a rat.

It's just like when Trump made his speech, his commencement speech at Liberty University, I saw something that I've never seen. ABC News was there, and they're running around asking the parents of students at Liberty University what about Donald Trump they don't like. Are you upset that Trump is here? Do you ever remember any such reporting at an Barack Obama or Michelle Obama commencement? Of course not. And Trump was loved and adored at this thing, and he had some great things to say.

If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she's given the speech - which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech - is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.

The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.

Speech is protected in the U.S., and at the risk of repeating a hackneyed aphorism, free speech is worthless unless it applies to offensive speech. It is an American value, and one well worth protecting.

Free speech is against governments, not against the NBA. So the players and coaches and indeed owners have been fined for their speech, which is costly rather than free. I sort of acknowledge that there is not free speech when you agree to work in the NBA.