Commencement Address Quote
The graduation-speech line, a genre with its own conventions and its own myths.
Commencement addresses are among the most reliably quoted speeches in modern public life. The genre's conventions are narrow — a personal failure, a reframing, a charge to the graduating class — and that structure reliably produces a single detachable line near the end.
Several such lines have become standard quotations in their own right, and the best of them work because the speaker resists the genre's pull toward uplift: David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon address is quoted mainly for its parable about attention, not for encouragement.
The genre also generates misattribution at scale. Speeches never given are attributed to famous figures each spring, the best-documented case being the 'Wear Sunscreen' essay by Mary Schmich, circulated for years as an MIT commencement address by Kurt Vonnegut.
Common mistake: quoting a commencement line without the year and institution. These speeches are rarely published as books, so the occasion is the citation.
“This is water.”
Keep reading the glossary
A formal public speech — the original setting for many of the most-quoted lines in history.
Assigning a quote to the wrong person — the most common error in quotation.
A short, motivational line — often quoted, often misattributed — offered as consolation, exhortation, or self-help.
A quote attributed to a famous person that they almost certainly never said.