Randy Pausch

1960–2008 · American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design

Topics: life, learning, programming, engineering leadership

• Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I've always believed that if you took one tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out.

  — Randy Pausch

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

  — Randy Pausch

• When you’ve had something for ten years that you hold so precious, it’s the toughest thing in the world to hand it over. And the only advice I can give you is, find somebody better than you to hand it to.

  — Randy Pausch

• Treat the Disease, Not the Symptom.

  — Randy Pausch

• The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they're learning something else. I’ve done it my whole career. And the head fake here is that they’re learning to program but they just think they’re making movies and video games.

  — Randy Pausch

• You get people to help you by telling the truth; by being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term, earnest is long term.

  — Randy Pausch

• The key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have.

  — Randy Pausch

• Time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think.

  — Randy Pausch

• It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not.

  — Randy Pausch

• You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.

  — Randy Pausch

• We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully — for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up.

  — Randy Pausch

• Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.

  — Randy Pausch

• Having been selected to be an author in the World Book, I now believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information, because I know what the quality control is for real encyclopedias — they let me in.

  — Randy Pausch

• Get a feedback loop and listen to it. … When people give you feedback, cherish it and use it.

  — Randy Pausch

• The questions are always more important than the answers.

  — Randy Pausch

• A good apology is like antibiotic, a bad apology is like rubbing salt in the wound.

  — Randy Pausch