Randy Pausch Quotes

Too many young people are being taught to give up their dreams before they have any experience attempting to pursue them.

Unless you're willing to fail miserably in the pursuit of your dreams, you'll never make it.

To achieve your dreams, work is required. Suffering is optional.

...The important thing is: if you fail once, or if your luck is bad this time, the dream is still there. A dream is only over if you give it up-or if it comes true.

After five awful movies, I admitted failure and said I was not cut out to be an actor. But how many people get a chance to live their dream?

I realised I'd never climb Everest but thought I could still write a book.

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed—I know well. For it is a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

The Special Olympics motto, 'Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt,' really speaks to me because it embodies exactly what I have pursued in my life. Really, that's all any of us can hope for - a chance to be brave and to pursue a dream.

I'm about to reach my dreams and I aint even got my arms stretched.

Anything can happen if you are willing to put in the work and remain open to the possibility. Dreams are realized by effort, determination, passion and staying connected to that sense of who you are.

I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.

Trying to be the best. Failing. Getting back up. Those characteristics are going to allow you to make great decisions. They are going to allow you to compete. They are going to allow you to achieve your best. That's the American dream.

Start small; Think possibilities; Reach beyond your known abilities; Invest all you have in your dream; Visualize miracles; Expect to experience success.

Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.

Why don't people's hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams? [...] Because that's what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don't like to suffer.

I was young, and I think your mistakes sort of mold you. It was important for me to make that one. After that, I definitely made it a point to not let others get in the way of what I wanted to do. Whether it's a relationship or your family or friends, the people close to you should encourage you to work towards your dreams. That was an important lesson for me to learn.

You have to dream, you have to have a vision, and you have to set a goal for yourself that might even scare you a little because sometimes that seems far beyond your reach. Then I think you have to develop a kind of resistance to rejection, and to the disappointments that are sure to come your way.

Let's start anew. Life is goals - Purpose-Attempts - Struggle-Dreams and Accomplishmenties. It sounds confusing (my fault), but it's actually simple.

I should figure out why I'm so much more interested in doing something that I think is really hard. But, somehow, the thing that is hard for me feels more noble.

Nobodys life ever goes according to plan. So why do we keep on planning? Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become. And fail. I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.

I applied to be an astronaut four times. I was rejected three times before I was accepted. So, it's about that, not - following your dream and not giving up.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. So you asked, ‘When things get really, really difficult in your life, what keeps you going?’ For me, it’s always that the most difficult moments in my life, the moments in which I believe I’ve completely failed or hit bottom, I can actually directly link them to something later that is either a true success or a dream come true. So, I do believe that if you can maintain that everything happens for a reason, you can find the strength and the lesson in those difficult moments and grow stronger.

The secret to living a full life with no regrets and to staying young is to figure out what you believe in and fight for it. If you lose, don't give up. If you win, raise the bar, and then rare back and do something else. And remember that, with the accumulation of years, our responsibilities to the future grow greater, not less.

I think that we all have something in common in that we have dreams. The thing about dreams is sometimes you get to live them out.