Top 250 Randy Pausch Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “We keep what is valuable to us, what we cherish.”

— Randy Pausch

102. “Earnestness is highly underestimated. It comes from the core, while hip is trying to impress you on the surface.”

— Randy Pausch

103. “Anything is possible, and that’s something we should not lose sight of. The inspiration and the permission to dream is huge.”

— Randy Pausch

104. “Often think of the worst-case scenario, the “Eaten By Wolves” factor.”

— Randy Pausch

105. “Experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”

— Randy Pausch

106. “He had high hopes for society, and though his hopes were too often dashed, he remained a raging optimist.”

— Randy Pausch

107. “People lie for lots of reasons, often because it seems like a way to get what they want with less effort.”

— Randy Pausch

108. “If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.”

— Randy Pausch

109. “The person who failed often knows how to avoid future failures. The person who knows only success can be more oblivious to all the pitfalls.”

— Randy Pausch

110. “Walls aren’t put in our life to stop us, they are there to test how much we really want somthing.”

— Randy Pausch

111. “Focus on other people, not on yourself.”

— Randy Pausch

112. “If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?”

— Randy Pausch

113. “Watch What They Do, Not What They Say.”

— Randy Pausch

114. “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”

— Randy Pausch

115. “Never underestimate the importance of having fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day because there’s no other way to play it.”

— Randy Pausch

116. “Becoming an Eagle Scout is just about the only thing you can put on your resume at age fifty that you did at age fourteen – and it still impresses.”

— Randy Pausch

117. “The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!”

— Randy Pausch

118. “The number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn.”

— Randy Pausch

119. “Everyone has to contribute to the common good. To not do so can be described in one word: selfish.”

— Randy Pausch

120. “One key factor in the downward spiral in our educational system is that there is too much stroking and too little real feedback.”

— Randy Pausch

121. “Because you’re such a good salesman, and if you go work for a company, they’re going to use you as a salesman. If you’re going to be a salesman, you might as well be selling something worthwhile, like education.”

— Randy Pausch

122. “I’LL TAKE an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long-term. Earnestness is highly underestimated. It comes from the core, while hip is trying to impress you with the surface.”

— Randy Pausch

123. “Call home at least once a week. It’s a proven fact that we call home less the older we get. And that’s wrong. It should be the other way around. As we get older, our parents get older.”

— Randy Pausch

124. “Advice is very easy to give, and even easier not to follow, so I don’t fool with it.”

— Randy Pausch

125. “We’ve placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people’s rights. That’s how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities.”

— Randy Pausch

126. “To-Do lists help us break life into small steps.”

— Randy Pausch

127. “It’s interesting, the secrets you decide to reveal at the end of your life.”

— Randy Pausch

128. “Don’t Obsess Over What People Think.”

— Randy Pausch

129. “If you wait long enough,” he said, “people will surprise and impress you.” As he saw things: When you’re frustrated with people, when they’ve made you angry, it just may be because you haven’t given them enough time. 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.”

— Randy Pausch

130. “Halfhearted or insincere apologies are often worse than not apologizing at all because recipients find them insulting.”

— Randy Pausch

131. “Brick walls are not there to keep us out, they are there to show us how much we want something.”

— Randy Pausch

132. “Failure is not just acceptable, it’s essential.”

— Randy Pausch

133. “Filing in alphabetical order is better than running around and saying, ‘I know it was blue and I was eating something when I had it.”

— Randy Pausch

134. “A parent’s job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams. The best we can do is to help thm develop a personal set of tools for the task.”

— Randy Pausch

135. “Tenacity is a virtue, but it’s not always crucial for everyone to observe how hard you work at something.”

— Randy Pausch

136. “It doesn’t matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.” You.”

— Randy Pausch

137. “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.”

— Randy Pausch

138. “People lie for lots of reasons, often because it seems like a way to get what they want with less effort. But like many short-term strategies, it’s ineffective long-term. You run into people again later, and they remember you lied to them. And they tell lots of other people about it. That’s what amazes me about lying.”

— Randy Pausch

139. “There is more than one way to measure profits and losses. On every level, institutions can and should have a heart.”

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

141. “Be good at something. It makes you valuable.”

— Randy Pausch

142. “I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.”

— Randy Pausch

143. “When you’re frustrated with people, when they’ve made you angry, it just may be because you haven’t given them enough time.”

— Randy Pausch

144. “Each of us must decide: Am I a fun-loving Tigger or am I a sad-sack Eeyore? Pick a camp.”

— Randy Pausch

145. “As I see it, a parent’s job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams. The best we can do is to help them develop a personal set of tools for the task. So my dreams for my kids are very exact: I want them to find their own path to fulfillment. And given that I won’t be there, I want to make this clear: Kids, don’t try to figure out what I wanted you to become. I want you to become what you want to become. Having.”

— Randy Pausch

146. “Believe nothing a man tells you and everything he shows you.”

— Randy Pausch

147. “For Jai and me, our dented cars became a statement in our marriage. Not everything needs to be fixed.”

— Randy Pausch

148. “There’s a limit to how many times you can read how great you are and what an inspiration you are, but I’m not there yet.”

— Randy Pausch

149. “Throughout my academic career, I’d given some pretty good talks. But being considered the best speaker in the computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs. And right then, I had the feeling that I had more in me, that if I gave it my all, I might be able to offer people something special. “Wisdom” is a strong word, but maybe that was it.”

— Randy Pausch

150. “Smart isn’t enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone else feel happy to be here.” p118.”

— Randy Pausch