Quotes from book

The Last Lecture

“Look, I'm going to find a way to be happy, and I'd really love to be happy with you, but if I can't be happy with you, then I'll find a way to be happy without you.”

“If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, "tell the truth." If I got three more words, I'd add: "All the time."”

“Its important to have specific dreams. Dream Big. Dream without fear.”

“It's not how hard you hit. It's how hard you get hit…and keep moving forward.”

“Never give up: There are certain times that you think, “OK, you have beaten me down to my knees. And now the challenge is, I am on my knees and you keep on beating me down. And the question is, are you going to keep beating me all the way to the ground or will I find a way to struggle my way back on to my feet.””

“Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.”

“When you do the right thing, good stuff has a way of happening.”

“We're not going to talk about spirituality and religion. Although I will tell you that I have experienced a deathbed conversion. I just bought a Macintosh.”

“When told by a female colleague about how a girl can pick the right guy, she said... "When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do."”

“The best gift an educator can give is to get someone to become self-reflective.”

“There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it; You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.”

“When you're eight or nine years old and you look at the TV set men are landing on the moon — anything is possible. And that is something we need to not lose sight of, is that the inspiration and permission to dream is immense.”

“I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play.”

“Junior faculty members used to come up to me and say. "Wow, you got tenure early; what's your secret?" I said, "It's pretty simple, call me any Friday night in my office at 10 o'clock and I'll tell you."”

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!”

“And the course was all about bonding. People used to say, you know, what’s going to make for a good world? I said, I can’t tell you beforehand, but right before they present it I can tell you if the world’s good just by the body language. If they’re standing close to each other, the world is good.”

“When you’ve had something for ten years that you hold so precious, it’s the toughest thing in the world to hand it over. And the only advice I can give you is, find somebody better than you to hand it to.”

“And I think that that’s one of the best things you can give somebody – the chance to show them what it feels like to make other people get excited and happy.”

“We keep what is valuable to us, what we cherish.”