Jimmy Valvano Speech - Don’t Give Up, Don’t Ever Give Up

Jimmy Valvano was a college basketball coach who is now also remembered for giving one of the most inspirational speeches of all time. Jimmy was diagnosed with metastatic adenocarcinoma, a rare type of bone cancer, and spoke at the 1993 ESPY awards shortly before his death.

While accepting the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award, Jimmy gave advice during his speech that would eventually inspire millions of people worldwide.

One of the memorable things Jimmy had to say included this statement:

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special”

Jimmy followed this statement by saying:

“I urge all of you to enjoy the precious moments you have in life and keep your dreams alive despite problems. I would like to be able to spend whatever time I have left and give hope to others.”

In Jimmy Valvano’s honor ESPN helped him build the Jimmy V foundation where the motto is “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up”. If we can apply that motto to whatever we’re struggling with in life we’ll always come out on top knowing we did our best.

Jimmy said it best during his closing remarks:

“Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.”