Randy Pausch Quotes

Always think, 'what's the worst that can happen' and have some kind of strategy to deal with it

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.

We know we cannot underestimate the importance of emergency planning in our region, nor can we assume we'll have ample warning time. If an earthquake or terrorist attack hits, we won't necessarily have advance alerts or opportunities to double- and triple-check our plans.

Anything you say before a pandemic occurs sounds alarmist; anything you say after it occurs is inadequate.

If you're on a bus and going down a snowy mountain like in Tahoe, and the bus loses its brakes, where do you want to be sitting? Immediately, you all think, 'In the back.' But in the front would be the correct answer. As a quarterback, you want to take control of it.

The optimist lives on the peninsula of infinite possibilities; the pessimist is stranded on the island of perpetual indecision.

I know I made plenty of mistakes in my tenure. But one of the things that you learn is to be very careful and to protect yourself down the road a little bit, which is to say you've got to think ahead and think where is the story going to go? What are all the possible outcomes? And how do I protect the president from unexpected twists and turns in the road?

Almost everything I do when I approach an operational problem comes from the time I've been in space. It's a way of organizing your thoughts. We use problem-solving; what we call "what-if-ing." What if this happened? What would we do? We go over plan B, C, D, E, F, and whatever else, depending on the criticality of what we're doing. This kind of thing can be applied almost everywhere, even at home.

The danger is different from the fear. ... [practice] what to do if things go wrong, as well as right.

We're hoping for the best, but we need to prepare for the worst.

As Mayor of San Francisco, I will work hard to ensure that, in the event of natural or man-made disasters, San Franciscans are prepared and our City is protected.

Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is there for a natural disaster or some other catastrophe.

Life is going to hit you some line drives, and sometimes you'll have to think fast. However, it's better to think first than to think fast.

So, all during the '90s and, you know, for the first half of this decade, we had opportunities to get evacuation plans in place, better communications in place.

But I think the bottom line right now is to take the constructive criticism and use that to build toward, as I say, the hurricane season that is 100 days away. And we don't have a lot of time to waste before we start to address that next set of challenges.

No, but you've got to be here in case something does happen.

If you have a major disaster involving hundreds of thousands, or in this case millions of people, whether it be a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, the first 72 hours are going to be totally chaotic no matter what you plan to do.

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn't have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

I tremendously enjoy getting involved in a troubled situation and straightening it out... My interest would be if there was a situation that came up, and I thought I could do something with and the price was right, I would be interested.

We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur .

To prepare for a disaster, practice the worst case scenario. We don’t usually do that.

No general in the midst of battle has a great discussion about what he is going to do if defeated.