Randy Pausch

Computer Science Professor
Commencement speech at N/A, N/A

Randy Pausch was an esteemed educator and professor, best known for his inspiring "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University. Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Pausch's moving lecture on achieving childhood dreams captivated millions and became a bestselling book. His address underscored the importance of perseverance, passion, and the pursuit of one's dreams in both education and life.

10 top life lessons by Randy Pausch

1. Embrace Opportunities: Seize opportunities when they come your way, as reflected in the speaker’s own experiences. Even if faced with initial setbacks, stay open to possibilities and be willing to pursue what excites you.
2. Appreciate Your Alma Mater: Acknowledge and appreciate the institutions and people who have played a significant role in your life. Gratitude for the opportunities and kindness shown to you is important.
3. Overcome Obstacles: Despite facing a terminal prognosis, the speaker emphasizes the importance of not succumbing to despair. Facing challenges with resilience and maintaining a positive outlook is key.
4. Quality of Life Matters: It’s not about how long you live, but how well you live. The speaker stresses the importance of living a fulfilling and meaningful life rather than just extending its duration.
5. Embrace Mistakes: Learn to embrace your mistakes. The speaker expresses that the things that truly matter are the risks taken and the attempts made, not the errors or embarrassments along the way.
6. Chase Your Passion: Find your passion and pursue it. The speaker encourages the graduates to identify what truly excites them and to center their lives around those pursuits, as opposed to being driven solely by external measures like money or possessions.
7. Avoid External Metrics: External measures such as money and material possessions are not the source of true passion. The speaker advises against using these external metrics as a yardstick for personal success or fulfillment.
8. Seek Inner Fulfillment: True passion and fulfillment come from within. The speaker encourages a focus on internal satisfaction and personal growth, highlighting that the pursuit of material success often leads to an unfulfilling and endless cycle of comparison.
9. Value Relationships: Ground your passion in relationships with others. The speaker suggests that genuine fulfillment and love come from the connections you build with people, emphasizing the importance of gaining the respect of peers and nurturing meaningful relationships.
10. Prioritize Others: The ultimate fulfillment comes from prioritizing the happiness of others. The speaker shares a personal journey of waiting until 39 to get married, emphasizing the importance of finding someone whose happiness is more important than one’s own. This serves as a reminder to prioritize meaningful connections and shared joy in relationships.

Best quotes of Randy Pausch‘s speech

"It is not the things that we do in life that we regret on our deathbed, it is the things we do not do."

Video of Randy Pausch‘s Commencement speech at N/A

Commencement speech transcript

I’m glad to be here today. Hell, I’m glad to be anywhere today. President Cohen asked me to come and give the charge to the graduates. I assure you it’s nothing compared to the charge you have just given me. This is an incredible place. I’ve seen it through so many lenses. I saw it when I was a graduate student that didn’t get admitted and then somebody invited me back and said that “Okay, we’ll change our mind.” I saw it as a place that hired me back to be on the faculty many years later and then gave me the chance to do what anybody wants to do which is follow their passion follow their heart and do the things they’re excited about. The great thing about this university unlike almost all of the other ones I know of is that nobody gets in your way when you try to do it and that’s just fantastic. To the degree that a human being can love an institution I love this place and I love all of the people and I’m very grateful to Jerry Cohen and everyone else for all the kindness that has been shown to me.

Last August I was told it was likely that I had three to six months to live. I’m on month nine now and I’m not going to get down and do any pushups but there will be a short pickup basketball game later. Somebody said to me, in light of those numbers, “Wow, so you’re really beating the Grimm Reaper.” and what I said without even thinking about it is that we don’t beat the reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what we will do between the time we’re born and the time he shows up, because when he shows up it’s too late to do all the things that you always want to kind of get around to.

I think the only advice I can give you on how to live your life well is first off remember, it’s a cliché but I love clichés, it is not the things we do in live that we regret on our deathbed. It is the things we do not. I assure you I’ve done a lot of really stupid things and none of them bother me. All of the mistakes and all of the dopey things and all of the times I was embarrassed, they don’t matter. What matters is that I can look back and say pretty much anytime I got a chance to do something cool I tried to grab for it. That’s where my solace comes from.

The second thing that I would add to that and I didn’t coordinate on the subject of this word, but I think it’s the right word that comes up, is passion. You will need to find your passion. Many of you have already done it. Many of you will later. Many of you may take until your 30’s or 40’s but don’t give up on finding it because then all you’re doing is waiting on the Reaper. Find your passion and follow it. If there is anything I have learned in my life you will not find that passion in things and you will not find that passion in money because the more things and the more money you have the more you will just look around and use that as the metric and there will always be someone with more.

Your passion must come from the things that fill you from the inside. Honors and awards are nice things but only to the extent that they regard the real respect from your peers. To be thought well of by other people that you think even more highly of is a tremendous honor that I’ve been granted.

Find your passion, and in my experience, no matter what you do at work or what you do in official settings that passion will be grounded in people. It will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes. If you can gain the respect of those around you and the passion and the true love, and I’ve said this before, I waited until 39 to get married because I had to wait that long to find someone whose happiness was more important than mine. If nothing else I hope that all of you can find that kind of passion and that kind of love in your life. Thank you.

Carnegie Mellon
May 18, 2008