Randy Pausch Quotes

An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

The main battle is to make people realise that doubt is important. Doubt is good. The 'don't know' answer sometimes is the box you should tick, and it's about not being scared about that fact. Even the greatest minds don't know everything.

I don't mind being wrong, and I don't mind changing my mind.

I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it.

I doubt about myself. I think doubts are good in life. The people who don't have doubts I think only two things-arrogance or not intelligence.

Intellectual modesty is humility as to what I know; intellectual humility is modesty as to what I do not know

When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.

Whoever has not arrived at the clear insight that there might be greatness entirely outside his own sphere for which he has no understanding, whoever does not have at least a dim inkling in which area of the human spirit this greatness might be situated: he is within his own sphere either without genius, or he has not educated himself up to the point of the classical attitude.

I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.

Clarity and consistency are not enough: the quest for truth requires humility and effort.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

I know too much to be a sceptic and too little to be a dogmatist.

The learned man knows that he is ignorant.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

You don't have to have all the answers all the time. But the best thing to know is what you don't know.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

I've never professed to be an intellectual. I don't try to be.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

I would hardly say that I have a rich knowledge of anything in particular, but I do seem to be burdened with an unseemly appetite for intellectual and artistic erudition, which, for the sake of balance, I keep well harnessed to a reliable sense of the absurd.

What is important is that one utilizes one's intellect and not to be 100 percent sure about one's convictions. One should always leave room for doubt.