Dr Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture - quotes

following is copied from http://teamrich.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/pausch-last-lecture/

Quotable Quotes from Dr Randy Pausch’s Last Public Lecture for those who want a quick review of the lecture:

■ “Don’t Complain, Just Work Harder.”
■ “It is not about Achieving your Dreams but Living your Life. If you lead your Life the right way, the Karma will take care of itself, the Dreams will come to you. “
■ “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.”
■ “We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I’m not as depressed as you think I should be, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
■ “Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.”
■ “No one is pure evil. Find the Best in everybody…. Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their Good side. Just keep waiting.”
■ “Experience is what you get when you Didn’t get what you Wanted.”
■ “Never lose the child-like Wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what Drives us. Help others.”
■ “How do you get people to help you? 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.”
■ “Show gratitude. Gratitude is a simple and powerful thing.”
■ “Having Fun for me is like a fish talking about the importance of water. I don’t know how it is like not to have Fun… I will keep having Fun everyday I have left.”
■ “It is Important to have Specific Childhood Dreams.”
He wanted to play football in the NFL; he wanted to write an article for the √World Book Encyclopedia; he wanted to be Captain Kirk from “Star Trek”; and he wanted to work for the √Disney Co. He also wanted to experience the √Weightlessness of Zero Gravity;
However, Randy, as a kid, knew that he did not have the necessary physical prerequisites to be an astronaut. So he focussed on the dream of being able to float in zero gravity. He got his wish when he and his students earned the privilege to use the KC-135 (also known as the “vomit comet”) – a modified Boeing 707 four-engine turbojet that NASA uses to simulate conditions of weightlessness.

■ “Be Good at Something; it makes you Valuable.”
■ “I’m sorry I won’t be around to raise my kids. It makes me very sad but I can’t change that fact, so I did everything I could with the time I have and the time I had to help other people.”
Pausch recently took his 5-year-old son to Walt Disney World to swim with the dolphins. As his oldest child, the boy will be the only one who may have clear memories of his father.

■ “I’ve never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion. We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived.”
■ “If someone rides on you for 2 hours, you know they care for you” (on his experiences in baseball training)
■ “To be cliché, death is a part of life and it’s going to happen to all of us. I have the blessing of getting a little bit of advance notice and I am able to optimize my use of time down the home stretch.”
■ If you want to achieve your dreams, you better learn to work and play well with others. Tell the Truth. That means you got to live with integrity.
■ A good apology has three parts:
1. “I’m sorry”;
2. “It was my fault” and
3. “How do I make it right”. The last part tells about your sincerity.
■ On Education: “Mark Twain says, “Don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education.” I always tell my students that they should spend their time in whatever way helps them learn. I’m perfectly happy if they cut my class because they were doing something that was a better use of their time” – Time, 10 April 2008.

Dr Pausch is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction and Design at the Carnegie Melon University (CMU). He has done consulting work for Disney and Google, written over 70 books and is the creator of the Alice Interactive Computing Program – which allows students to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.