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Quotational Therapy: Part 65 -- Jimmy V.

Jim Valvano's ESPY Award Speech, Arthur Ashe Courage Award-

Earlier this week, ESPN broadcast the Jimmy V. Basketball Classic from Madison Square Garden. St. Joe's beat Kansas, and Michigan State beat Boston College. It reminded me of a great speech that has had an impact on a lot of people over the past dozen years.

On March 4, 1993, North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano, stricken with cancer, gave one of the truly great speeches of modern history. It was a truly compelling piece of rhetoric, and one can apply its flourishes and nuances and phrases to just about anything in life.

Here's a bit of it:

I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm," to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality....

I know, I gotta go, I gotta go, and I got one last thing and I said it before, and I want to say it again. Cancer can take away all 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.

Jim Valvano died the next month. Read (or watch/listen to) the entire speech here.

Previous Quotational Therapy Session:

Milton Friedman.

The right quote can be therapeutic, so tune in to WILLisms.com for quotational therapy every Monday and Friday.

Posted by Will Franklin · 9 December 2005 12:56 PM

Comments

Posted by: Buckley F. Williams at December 9, 2005 08:33 PM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at December 11, 2005 11:16 AM