We can't change it, and we just have to decide how we're going to respond to that. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

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It is the greatest thing of cognitive dissonance you will ever see (followed by pushup's to challenge those would pitty him).

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I have experienced a deathbed conversion... I just bought a Macintosh. Now, I knew that I'd get 9% of the audience with that.

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And he showed up for practice the first day, and you know, there's big hulking guy, we were all scared to death of him. And he hadn't brought any footballs. How are we going to have practice without any footballs? And one of the other kids said, excuse me coach, but there's no football. And Coach Graham said, right, how many men are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right, and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right, so we're going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.

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

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Most of what we learn, we learn indirectly (or by "head fake").

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Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people.

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Remember brick walls let us show our dedication. They are there to separate us from the people who don't really want to achieve their childhood dreams. Don't bail. The best of the gold's at the bottom of barrels of crap.

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Be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.

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So today's talk was about my childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and some lessons learned. But did you figure out the head fake? It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.

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Have you figured out the second head fake? The talk's not for you, it's for my kids.

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                    by Randy Pausch