Be the Best

Tomb of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King

Today is the day we remember that we are more than we have been.

I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life’s blueprint?

… . 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 worth, and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re 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 the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor… .

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in in the valley. But be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

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 a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you will win or fall. Be the best of whatever you are.

Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadephia, PA, October 26, 1967.