Randy Pausch

Quotes

1. My dad was so full of life, anything with him was an adventure. [Shows picture of his Dad holding a brown paper bag] I don’t know what’s in that bag, but I know it’s cool. My dad dressed up as Santa Claus, but he also did very, very significant things to help lots of people. This is a dormitory in Thailand that my mom and dad underwrote. And every year about 30 students get to go to school who wouldn’t have otherwise. This is something my wife and I have also been involved in heavily. And these are the kind of things that I think everybody ought to be doing. Helping others.

2. 

   Coach Graham use to ride me hard . . . "you're doing it all wrong! Go back! Do it again!" An assistant coach muttered that it was a good thing Coach Graham rode me hard, because "when you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

3. 

   What he said was: "You obviously don't know where the bar should be, and you're only going to do a disservice by putting it anywhere." And boy was that good advice. Because what he said was, you obviously don’t know where the bar should be, and you’re only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere.

4. 

   Junior faculty members used to come up to me and say. "Wow, you got tenure early; what's your secret?" I said, "It's pretty simple, call me any Friday night in my office at 10 o'clock and I'll tell you."

5. 

   When you do something young enough and you train for it, it just becomes a part of you.

6. 

   Time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think."

7. 

   Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.

8. 

   We're not going to talk about spirituality and religion. Although I will tell you that I have experienced a deathbed conversion. I just bought a Macintosh.

9. 

   How do you get people to help you? You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth; by being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term, earnest is long term.

10. 

    Having been selected to be an author in the World Book, I now believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information, because I know what the quality control is for real encyclopedias — they let me in.

11. 

    If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, "tell the truth." If I got three more words, I'd add: "All the time."

    p. 163

12. 

    Look, I'm going to find a way to be happy, and I'd really love to be happy with you, but if I can't be happy with you, then I'll find a way to be happy without you."