The Last Lecture

by Randy Pausch

What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

“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.”

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

You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.

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

The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

I tend to say what I’m thinking and what I believe. I don’t have much patience for incompetence.

“It’s not helpful if we spend every day dreading tomorrow,”

Time must be explicitly managed, like money.

You can always change your plan, but only if you have one.

Are you spending your time on the right things?

Develop a good filing system.

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

“I’m a recovering jerk. And that gives me the moral authority to tell you that you can be a recovering jerk, too.”

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.

Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.

If nobody ever worried about what was in other people’s heads, we’d all be 33 percent more effective in our lives and on our jobs.

EXPERIENCE IS what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

It’s interesting, the secrets you decide to reveal at the end of your life.

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.

“It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.”