Top 250 Randy Pausch Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Don’t finish someone’s sentences. And talking louder or faster doesn’t make your idea any better.”

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

203. “But being considered the best speaker in a computer science department is like being known as the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs.”

— Randy Pausch

204. “I’ve also collected techniques for keeping unnecessary calls shorter. If I’m sitting while on the phone, I never put my feet up. In fact, it’s better to stand when you’re on the phone. You’re more apt to speed things along. I also like to have something in view on my desk that I want to do, so I have the urge to wrap things up with the caller.”

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

206. “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

207. “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. Rights have to come from somewhere, and they come from the community. In return, all of us have a responsibility to the community. Some people call this the ‘communitarian’ movement, but I call it common sense.”

— Randy Pausch

208. “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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

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

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

214. “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

215. “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

216. “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

217. “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

218. “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

219. “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

220. “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

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

— Randy Pausch

223. “Almost everybody has a good side.”

— Randy Pausch

224. “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

225. “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

226. “A veces, todo lo que tienes que hacer es preguntar.”

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

228. “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

229. “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

230. “Time is all you have.”

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

232. “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

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

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

236. “No Job Is Beneath You.”

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

239. “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

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

— Randy Pausch

241. “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

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

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

244. “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

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

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

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

— Randy Pausch

248. “I sure got their attention. That’s always the first step to solving an ignored problem.”

— 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. “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