I want to ask you a question, and that is, what is in your life's blueprint? This is the most important. and crucial period of your lives for what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well determine which way your life shall go.
And whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint. And that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, as the model for those who are to build the building. And a building is not well erected without a good, sound, and solid blueprint.
And I want to suggest some of the things that should be in your life's blueprint. Number one in your life's blueprint should be A deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth, and your own somebody-ness. 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.
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.
And once you discover what it will be set out to do it, and to do it well. And I say to you, my young friends, that doors are opening to each of you. Doors are opening to each of you.
of opportunity are opening to each of you that were not open to your mothers and to your fathers. And the great challenge facing you is to be ready to enter these doors as they open. And so I would ask that you would be ready to open the doors of your mother and father. I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil.
I would say to you, don't drop out of school, and I understand all of the sociological reasons why we often drop out of school. But I urge you, in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you are forced to live so often with intolerable conditions, to be patient. stay in school, and when you discover what you're going to be in life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Set out to do a good job and do that job so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn't do it any better. If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill, be a scrub in the valley.
But be the best little scrub on the side of the rill. 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. Finally, in your life's blueprint, must be a commitment to the eternal principles. Of beauty, love, and justice. Don't allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them.
Don't allow anybody to cause you to lose your self-respect to the point that you do not struggle for justice. However young you are, you have a right to be a man. responsibility to seek to make your nation a better nation in which to live. You have a responsibility to seek to make life better for everybody.
you must be involved in the struggle for freedom and justice. Now in this struggle for freedom and justice, there are many constructive things that we all can do and that we all must do. And so our slogan must not be burn baby burn, it must be build baby build. Organize, build, organize. Yes, our slogan must be, learn baby learn, so that we can earn baby earn.
And with a powerful commitment, I believe that we can transform dark yesterdays of injustice into bright tomorrows of justice and humanity. Let us keep going toward the goal of... Selfhood, toward the realization of the dream of brotherhood, and toward the realization of the dream of understanding goodwill.
Let nobody stop us, 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.