Randy Pausch Quotes

″Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.″

″Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I’ve seen this as one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment:You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.″

“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.”

″My parents had raised me to recognize that automobiles are there to get you from point A to point B. They are utilitarian devices, not expressions of social status. And so I told Jai we didn’t need to do cosmetic repairs.We’d just live with the dents and gashes….that is my belief that you don’t repair things if they still do what they’re supposed to do. The cars still work. Let’s just drive ’em.″

″People are more important than things. A car, even a pristine gem like my new convertible, was just a thing.″

″When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.″

’’There’s a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It’s not something you can give; it’s something they have to build. ”

“Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.’’

‘NO MATTER how bad things are, you can always make things worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better.″

″Time must be explicitly managed, like money. My students would sometimes roll their eyes at what they called ‘Pauschisms,’ but I stand by them. Urging students not to invest time on irrelevant details, I’d tell them: ‘It doesn’t matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.’ ″

″You can always change your plan, but only if you have one. I’m a big believer in to-do lists. It helps us break life into small steps. I once put “get tenure” on my to-do list. That was naïve. The most useful to-do list breaks tasks into small steps. It’s like when I encourage Logan to clean his room by picking up one thing at a time.″

“Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.”

″Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursuing?I’ve long held on to a clipping from a newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia.It featured a photo of a pregnant woman who had lodged a protest against a local construction site. She worried that the sound of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But get this: In the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she cared about her unborn child,the time she spent railing against jackhammers would have been better spent putting out that cigarette.″

″Luck is indeed where preparation meets opportunity.″

″Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids’ dreams, too.Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.″

″Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.″

″When you use money to fight poverty, it can be of great value, but too often, you’re working at the margins. When you’re putting people on the moon, you’re inspiring all of us to achieve the maximum of human potential, which is how our greatest problems will eventually be solved.″

″Fashion, by the way, is commerce masquerading as hip. I’m not at all interested in fashion, which is why I rarely buy new clothes. The fact that fashion goes out of fashion and then comes back into fashion based solely on what a few people somewhere think they can sell, well to me,that’s insanity.My parents taught me: You buy new clothes when your old clothes wear out. Anyone who saw what I wore to my last lecture knows this is advice I live by! ″

“Too many people go thru life complaining about their problems. I’ve always believed if you take one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solve the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out.”

″Jon warned me that sometimes this took great patience—even years.’But in the end,’ he said, ‘people will show you their good side. Almost everybody has a good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.’ ″

“What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?”

“The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”

“No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better.”

“We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

“It’s not about how to achieve your dreams; it’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.”

“An injured lion still wants to roar; It is about dignity and self esteem which isn’t quite the same as vanity.”

“Loyalty is a two-way street.”

“When you are doing something badly and no one’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones still telling you they love you and care.”

“People are more important than things.”

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