This inspirational video of a Martin Luther King Jr. speech features rarely seen footage of Martin Luther King, Jr., giving a motivational speech to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967.
King tells the children that they are at a very important time in their lives, when they must start to prepare a blueprint for their lives, and gives them poignant advice on how to do so.
If you would like to see the speech in its entirety, click here.
Martin Luther King’s Blueprint for Life
King said to the students, “the question is whether you have a proper, a solid, and a sound blueprint. And I want to suggest some of the things that should be in your life’s blueprint.” Here is the inspirational advice Martin Luther King Jr. then gave them to help build a blueprint for life.
#1 Know Your Worth
“Number one in your life’s blueprint should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth, and your own somebodiness.
Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you are nobody. Always feel that you count, always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.”
#2 Find Your Life’s Work
“Secondly, in your life’s blueprint, you must have as a basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor.
You’re going to be deciding as the days and the years unfold what you will do in life, what your life’s work will be. Once you discover what it will be, set out to do it, and to do it well.
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail! If you can’t be the Sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or you fail. Be the best of whatever you are.”
#3 Follow these Eternal Principles
“Finally, in your life’s blueprint, must be a commitment to the eternal principles of beauty, love, and justice. Well life, for none of us, has been a crystal stair, but we must keep moving, we must keep going.
If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving.”
