Randy Pausch Quotes

In the fifty years my parents were married, in the thousands of conversations my dad had with me, it had just never come up. And so there I was, weeks after his death, getting another lesson from him about the meaning of sacrifice — and about the power of humility

Never make a decision until you have to.

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

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

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

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

"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.

[My mother] saw it as part of her mission to keep my cockiness in check. I'm grateful for that now...We now live in an age when parents praise every child as a genius

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."

But I want her to grow up knowing that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her. I'd always thought the father/daughter thing was overstated. But I can tell you, sometimes, she looks at me and I just become a puddle.

Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you. He said, when you are pissed off at somebody, and you're angry at them, you just haven't given them enough time. Just give them a little more time — and they'll almost always impress you. And that really stuck with me. I think he's absolutely right on that one.

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

An injured lion wants to know if he can still roar.

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.

You will need find your passion. Many of you have already done it, many of you will later, many of you may take to your thirties or forties, but don't give up on finding it. Right, then all you are doing is waiting for the reaper. Find your passion and follow it. And if there is anything that I have learned in life, you will not find that passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and the more money you have, the more you will just look around and use that as the metric — and there will always be someone with more. Your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. And honors and awards are nice things, but only to the extent that they regard real respect from your peers. And to be thought of well by people you think of more highly up is a tremendous honor I've been granted. Find your passion, and in my experience, no matter what you do at work or what you do in in official settings, that passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes.