Before grads throw their mortarboards in the air there’s usually some speeches — some motivating and inspiring and others not so much.  Here’s five great quotes from recent graduation speeches:

5.  Ellen DeGeneres, Commencement Address at Tulane University, 2009
“Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path then by all means you should follow that.”

4. Stephen Colbert, Commencement Address at Northwestern University, 2011
“Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.”

3. Sheryl Sandberg, Commencement Address at Northwestern University, 2011
“Fortune does favor the bold, and I promise that you will never know what you’re capable of unless you try.”

2. Biz Stone, Commencement Address at Babson College, 2011
“Creativity is a renewable resource. Be as creative as you like, as often as you like, because you can never run out.”

1. Oprah Winfrey, Commencement Address at Spelman University, 2012
“Your calling isn’t something that somebody can tell you about. It’s what you feel. It’s a part of your life force. It is the thing that gives you juice. The thing that you are supposed to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You know it inside yourself.”