Top 1200 Graduation Speech Quotes & Sayings

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.

Students and invited speakers do not shed their constitutional rights when they step up to the graduation podium. Expressing faith in God does not disqualify a student from delivering a graduation message. Being designated as valedictorian or salutatorian is an honor, and students chosen for that honor should be free to share their gratitude to God with their fellow students and family members.

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.

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.

I went to the graduation the other night of my first great grandchild - he's 21 or 22; and right at the graduation I looked, and 92 percent of those who graduated at the University of Illinois were females. Where can a Black female, who are now the lawyers, the engineers; they are the ones graduating with top degrees; where will they find in a Black male a counterpart that is equal to them? We are filling the jails, we are filling the prisons.

I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

We have ways to protect the public when free speech crosses over in hate speech.

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

I had never really given any thought to working for the CIA, but graduation was upon me; I was getting married just a week or two after graduation; I had no job, no prospects for a job. And so I said sure, I'd be interested in working for the CIA.

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.

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.

The court has said you are entitled to robust speech on public sidewalks, even insulting 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.

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.

Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet toits god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought.

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

No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are.

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 could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes - which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.

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.

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.

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.

Together, we must all remember that one of the most effective responses to hate speech is more speech.

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

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.

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.

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.

True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.

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.

This is a perfect example of the power and ridiculousness of a website like Wikipedia. I did give a slightly contentious graduation speech, where I decided not to be funny as my classmates had hoped, which was why I was chosen. I was not valedictorian, that's for sure. Instead, I talked about the failure to communicate between the administration and the teachers and students. That's what was contentious about it. At some point, somebody wrote about that incident on my Wikipedia page. And then somebody added the bit about me exposing my genitals to the crowd.

Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth.

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.

If someone offends you by speech, you must learn to defend yourself by speech.

A law imposing criminal penalties on protected speech is a stark example of speech suppression.

The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.

No one has ever asked me to give a graduation speech. But in my years of working with aspiring entrepreneurs, many of them in college, I've gotten used to giving advice.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Death from this life is just graduation from this grade. It's our release, our graduation, our promotion. School is out! We've finished our schooling in this grade and we pass on to the next grade.

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

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

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.

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."

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

I gave the graduation speech at my high school. Not because I was valedictorian but because the grade voted for me to do it. And I gave a slightly contentious speech. I was a little critical of the administration. But for a long time it said on Wikipedia that I took my balls out and exposed myself to the crowd.

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.

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

Pleasant speech yields joy to all, and observing this, is there any need for unpleasant speech?