Commencement Quotes - Page 5

• En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.

  Philippa Gregory

  Ends, Fins

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• With whomsoever or wheresoever may rest the present causes of difficulty that apparently exist towards either the completion of the old engine, or the commencement of the new one, we trust they will not ultimately result in this generation's being acquainted with these inventions through the medium of pen, ink and paper merely; and still more do we hope, that for the honour of our country's reputation in the future pages of history, these causes will not lead to the completion of the undertaking by some other nation or government.

  Ada Lovelace

  Country, Ink And Paper, Government

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• Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!"

  Maximilien Robespierre

  Sleep, Hands, Support

  Last speech to the National Convention, www.bartleby.com. July 26, 1794.

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• We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.

  Hillary Clinton

  Integrity, Struggle, Political

  Commencement Speech, Wellesley College, www.wellesley.edu. 1969.

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• Upon the whole, therefore, she found, what has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself. It was consequently necessary to name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity; to have some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the present, and prepare for another disappointment.

  Jane Austen

  Disappointment, Names, Desire

  Jane Austen (2014). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.182, Lulu.com

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

  Hillary Clinton

  College, Groups, Firsts

  Source: www.vanityfair.com

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• The stunning part was that one time Neil McElroy the Secretary of Defense who was the father of one of our classmates spoke and basically at commencement, he told us all that our job after graduation was to get married and have interesting sons...and we all found that hard to believe.

  Madeleine Albright

  Jobs, Father, Believe

  Interview with Maeve Allsup, www.amwordmag.com. October 20, 2015.

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• What kind of a world are we going to leave the next generation? I, at least, want my children to look back and say, "My daddy was being arrested at the White House fence and booed off commencement stages. He was trying."

  Chris Hedges

  Children, White, Daddy

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• 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?

  David Corn

  Years, Advice, Buttons

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• At his Philadelphia alma mater, Temple University, Cosby gave commencement addresses and attended games. He served on the university`s board of trustees for more than three decades.

  Chaka Fattah

  Games, Philadelphia, Boards

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• There is a two-fold solemnity which belongs to the dying hour-it is the winding up of life, and it is the commencement of eternity.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Two, Dying, Eternity

  Frederick William Robertson (1880). “"The Human Race" and Other Sermons: Preached at Cheltenham, Oxford, and Brighton”

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• I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes) that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious and malleable thing.

  Ken Burns

  Events, Add, Realization

  "Commencement Address at Washington University in St. Louis" by Ken Burns, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 18, 2015.

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• If this day means anything, it means that you are now in the contingent of the responsible. You must be kind, yes, but you must also look beyond your own house. We're depending on you for your efforts and your vision. We are depending on your eye and your imagination to identify what wrongs exist and persist, and on your hands, your backs, your efforts, to right them.

  David Remnick

  Graduation, Mean, Eye

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• The commencement of coal mining at Parsa Kente is a milestone event in coal mining sector.

  Gautam Adani

  Events, Coal, Milestone

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• It is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement

  Jacques Derrida

  Desire, Archives, Return

  Jacques Derrida (1998). “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”, p.100, University of Chicago Press

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• There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.

  David Foster Wallace

  Frustration, Boredom, Adults

  "Ten Best Commencement Speeches: See A List, Take The Poll" by Katharine Zaleski, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 17, 2009.

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• They who once engage in iniquitous designs miserably deceive themselves when they think that they will go so far and no farther; one fault begets another, one crime renders another necessary; and thus they are impelled continually downward into a depth of guilt, which at the commencement of their career they would have died rather than have incurred.

  Robert Southey

  Thinking, Careers, Design

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• From the very commencement the student should set out to witness the progress and effects of sickness and ought to persevere in the daily observation of disease during the whole period of his studies.

  Robert James Graves

  Progress, Disease, Students

  Introductory Lectures (1850)

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• The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.

  Edmund Burke

  Government, Excellence, May

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• 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.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Sex, Political, Vacuums

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• Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God. What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Secret, Delight, Might

  Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo (1989). “The Supramental Manifestation, and Other Writings”, Lotus Press (WI)

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• The closing period of the fifteenth century witnessed the slow but sure increase of the churches of the Brethren. Although far from being unmolested, they yet enjoyed comparative rest. At the commencement of the sixteenth century their churches numbered two hundred in Bohemia and Moravia.

  Ezra Hall Gillett

  Two, Church, Increase

  Ezra Hall Gillett (1864). “The Life and Times of John Huss: Or, The Bohemian Reformation of the Fifteenth Century”, p.570

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• You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Evil, Disaster, Rejoice

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.15

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• The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever-new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing.

  William Booth

  Party, Self, Careers

  William Booth (2014). “In Darkest England and the Way Out”, p.51, Cambridge University Press

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• Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.

  Thomas Thomson

  Astrology, Magic, Superstitions

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