Most Famous Sunscreen Quote

What was the famous quote about sunscreen during a college graduation?

The famous quote about sunscreen from what many believe was a college graduation speech is "Wear sunscreen." This line opens the essay "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young," which was written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997.

The essay begins with: "Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '99, wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience."

Despite popular belief, this was never actually delivered as a commencement speech. Mary Schmich wrote it as a hypothetical graduation speech for her newspaper column. The essay gained massive popularity when it was erroneously attributed to author Kurt Vonnegut as a commencement speech he supposedly gave at MIT.

The essay later became the basis for Baz Luhrmann's spoken word song "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" in 1997, which reached number one in Ireland and the United Kingdom. This further cemented the sunscreen advice in popular culture.

One of the most memorable lines from the essay beyond the sunscreen advice is: "The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday."