Top 250 Randy Pausch Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “It was a hot summer night, and I had the soundtrack to Disney’s The Lion King blasting on my stereo. Tears actually began streaming down my face as I drove past the building. Here I was, the grown-up version of that wide-eyed eight-year-old at Disneyland. I had finally arrived. I was an Imagineer.”

— Randy Pausch

202. “Somehow, with the passage of time, and the deadlines that life imposes, surrendering became the right thing to do.”

— Randy Pausch

203. “Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things?”

— Randy Pausch

204. “One rule in our house is that you may not ask one-word questions. Dylan embraces that idea. He loves to formulate full-sentence questions, and his inquisitiveness goes beyond his years.”

— Randy Pausch

205. “If you dispense your own wisdom, others often dismiss it; if you offer wisdom from a third party, it seems less arrogant and more acceptable !”

— Randy Pausch

206. “A Bad Apology Is Worse Than No Apology.”

— Randy Pausch

207. “All right,” I said. “That is what it is. We can’t change it. We just have to decide how we’ll respond. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

— Randy Pausch

208. “Sports cut across boundaries of race and wealth.”

— Randy Pausch

209. “So it’s OK that I won’t set foot in the Promised Land. It’s still a wonderful sight.”

— Randy Pausch

210. “Dance with the one who brung you.”

— Randy Pausch

211. “Even if the scan results are bad tomorrow,” I had told her, “I just want you to know that it feels great to be alive, and to be here today, alive with you. Whatever news we get about the scans, I’m not going to die when we hear it. I won’t die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day. And I want you to know how much I’m enjoying it.”

— Randy Pausch

212. “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us the chance to show how badly we want something.”

— Randy Pausch

213. “I was heartbroken, but I was not deterred. I would find a way around this brick wall.”

— Randy Pausch

214. “Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was thirty-nine to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and the city where they live. “If you call directory assistance, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.”

— Randy Pausch

215. “When you go into the wilderness, the only thing you can count on is what you take with you.”

— Randy Pausch

216. “If I only had three words of advice, they would be, ‘Tell the Truth.’ If got three more words, I’d add, ‘all the time.’ 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.”

— Randy Pausch

217. “Here was a woman, having a child by accident that she surely would come to love. As for me, through the accident of cancer i’d be leaving three children to grow up without my love.”

— Randy Pausch

218. “There are a few key moments in anyone’s life. A person is fortunate if he can tell in hindsight when they happened.”

— Randy Pausch

219. “Almost everybody has a good side.”

— Randy Pausch

220. “Lucky” is a strange word to use to describe my situation, but a part of me does feel fortunate that I didn’t get hit by the proverbial bus. Cancer has given me the time to have these vital conversations with Jai that wouldn’t be possible if my fate were a heart attack or a car accident.”

— Randy Pausch

221. “When I was interviewing people to work for me, and I came upon a candidate who had been an Eagle Scout, I’d almost always try to hire him. I.”

— Randy Pausch

222. “Andy, I just gave my students a two-week assignment and they came back and did stuff that, had I given them an entire semester to complete it, I would have given them all A’s. What do I do?” Andy thought for a minute and said: “OK. Here’s what you do. Go back into class tomorrow, look them in the eyes and say, ‘Guys, that was pretty good, but I know you can do better.”

— Randy Pausch

223. “I knew for sure that I didn’t want the lecture to focus on my cancer. My medical saga was what it was, and I’d already been over it and over it.”

— Randy Pausch

224. “I’ve often carried a crayon in my shirt pocket. When I need to go back in time, I put it under my nose and I take another hit.”

— Randy Pausch

225. “The sane universities never went near this stuff, but Carnegie Mellon gave us explicit license to break the mold.”

— Randy Pausch

226. “The same is true in your life outside of your job. All my adult life I’ve felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: “We worked hard at it.”

— Randy Pausch

227. “Tenacity got me over the brick wall.”

— Randy Pausch

228. “All my life, I’ve been very aware that time is finite.”

— Randy Pausch

229. “Meet people properly: It all starts with the introduction.”

— Randy Pausch

230. “Instead of “I think we should do A, not B,” try “What if we did A, instead of B?” That allows people to offer comments rather than defend one choice.”

— Randy Pausch

231. “Who remembers that it was Kirk who introduced us to the cell phone?”

— Randy Pausch

232. “I told her I had nothing against yoga or meditation. But I did think it’s always best to try to treat the disease first. Her symptoms were stress and anxiety. Her disease was the money she owed. “Why.”

— Randy Pausch

233. “I let the slide linger, so the audience could follow the arrows and count my tumors. “All right,” I said. “That is what it is. We can’t change it. We just have to decide how we’ll respond. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

— Randy Pausch

234. “No Job Is Beneath You.”

— Randy Pausch

235. “Anybody out there who is a parent, if your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let them do it. It’ll be OK. Don’t worry about resale value on the house.”

— Randy Pausch

236. “I always liked telling my students: “Go out do for others what somebody did for you.”

— Randy Pausch

237. “I don’t know how many more times I will get to visit my childhood home. But it is a gift every time I go there. I still sleep in that bunk bed my father built, I look at those crazy walls, I think about my parents allowing me to paint, and I fall asleep feeling lucky and pleased.”

— Randy Pausch

238. “My colleague told me: “It took a long time, but I’ve finally figured it out. When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.”

— Randy Pausch

239. “While I could easily feel sorry for myself, that wouldn’t do them, or me, any good.”

— Randy Pausch

240. “Time is all you have.”

— Randy Pausch

241. “If you have a question,” my folks would say, “then find the answer.” The.”

— Randy Pausch

242. “Another way to be prepared is to think negatively.”

— Randy Pausch

243. “A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing.”

— Randy Pausch

244. “A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.”

— Randy Pausch

245. “My dad, a pretty able woodworker, made me that bed. The smile on that kid’s face, the wood slat, the look in his eyes: that photo reminds me that I won the parent lottery.”

— Randy Pausch

246. “As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster.”

— Randy Pausch

247. “All You Have Is What You Bring With You.”

— Randy Pausch

248. “We don’t want to create things that people will want to destroy.”

— Randy Pausch

249. “If your trashcan or wheelbarrow has dent in it, you don’t buy a new one. Maybe that’s because we don’t use trashcans and wheelbarrows to communicate our social status or identity to others.”

— Randy Pausch

250. “There are a lot of things I don’t worry about because I have a plan in place if they do.”

— Randy Pausch