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Who really said it

Don't give up. Don't ever give up.

Spoken by Jim Valvano 1946–1993 · American basketball coach & broadcaster
Verified In copyright

Valvano said it on 4 March 1993, accepting the first Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the first ESPY Awards, while announcing what he called the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research (today the V Foundation for Cancer Research). His actual sentence was ‘And its motto is, “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”’ — the words were the foundation’s motto before they were a quotation.

Last verified 28 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Don't give up. Don't ever give up.” Jim Valvano, accepting the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award, ESPY Awards, 4 March 1993, announcing the motto of what he called the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research (today the V Foundation). Provenance verified at quotle.info

Can you use it?

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Occasion
Acceptance speech, the first ESPY Awards
Award
Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award (inaugural)
Date
4 March 1993, New York
Broadcast by
ESPN

And its motto is, “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” ↑ the six famous words are a quotation inside a quotation — he was reading out a motto, not addressing the room

Punctuation varies: ESPN’s transcript prints it with an ellipsis, ‘Don’t give up ... don’t ever give up’, some outlets use a comma, and the V Foundation’s registered mark is ‘Don’t Give Up . . . Don’t Ever Give Up!’® The words are identical in every version.

Jimmy V's ESPYS speech, annotated — ESPN

How we know

  • The speech is on the record twice over: ESPN’s video of the 1993 ESPY speech ↗, and ESPN’s own annotated transcript ↗.
  • Independent transcripts agree on the wording, including the one at James Clear’s speech archive ↗ and Rev’s ↗.
  • Wikipedia ↗ confirms the occasion only: the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award was given to Valvano at the 1993 ESPYs. The foundation announcement is in the speech itself — ESPN’s annotated transcript carries ‘We are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And its motto is…’
  • The V Foundation ↗ still carries the line as its motto — its About page prints it as a registered mark, ‘Don’t Give Up . . . Don’t Ever Give Up!’® — which is the strongest kind of corroboration available: the organisation the sentence was written for has used it continuously ever since.
In copyright

The speech was delivered in 1993 and is firmly in copyright — nowhere near the pre-1931 threshold for the public domain — and the broadcast is ESPN’s. The motto is also the working slogan of the V Foundation, a live charitable trademark. The line is quoted here for identification and verification; do not treat the speech as free to reproduce.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Context

Why it matters

Valvano was dying when he said it. He had been given a year the previous summer, he had trouble getting out of his seat, and a screen in front of him was flashing ‘30 seconds’ at him to wrap up. He ignored it, talked for around ten minutes, and used the time to announce that he was starting a foundation to fund cancer research.

The six words are the foundation’s motto, spoken at the moment it was launched — which is why they carry more freight than a slogan should. He was not telling an audience of athletes to try harder. He was describing the terms on which he intended to spend the eight weeks he had left.

He was not telling athletes to try harder. He was setting the terms for the eight weeks he had left.

The line people usually pair it with

The other famous passage from the same speech is the one about what cancer could and could not take — his body, but not his mind, his heart or his soul. The two are often quoted together, and they come from the same ten minutes.

The V Foundation for Cancer Research still exists and still uses the motto; by its own count ↗ it has awarded nearly $458 million in research funding to more than 1,400 grantees. The line stayed in circulation because an institution kept saying it, not only because the speech was moving.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Hope

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Jim Valvano's 1993 ESPY Awards speechwww.espn.com

ESPN's video of the speech as broadcast — the primary record.
Jimmy V's ESPYS speech, annotatedwww.espn.com

ESPN's line-by-line transcript with notes on what was happening in the room.
'Don't Give Up' — full transcriptjamesclear.com

Independent transcript of the whole ten-minute speech, including the V Foundation announcement.
Arthur Ashe Courage Awarden.wikipedia.org

Confirms Valvano as the inaugural recipient at the 1993 ESPYs and the announcement he made there.
Jim Valvano — biographyen.wikipedia.org

The NC State years, the 1983 championship, the broadcasting career, and the diagnosis.

The true author

About Jim Valvano

Jim Valvano

1946–1993 · American basketball coach & broadcaster

Jim Valvano coached North Carolina State from 1980 to 1990 and is best remembered for 1983, when a team nobody rated beat Houston for the national championship and he ran around the floor looking for someone to hug. He moved to broadcasting with ESPN and ABC afterwards and won a CableACE award for it. In June 1992 he was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. He gave this speech nine months later and died on 28 April 1993, aged 47 — eight weeks after founding the charity that now carries the line.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Jim Valvano, acceptance speech for the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award, ESPY Awards, New York, 4 March 1993 (ESPN broadcast).

MLA (9th ed.)

Valvano, Jim. “Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award Acceptance Speech.” ESPY Awards, 4 Mar. 1993, New York. ESPN.

APA (7th ed.)

Valvano, J. (1993, March 4). Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award acceptance speech [Speech]. ESPY Awards, New York, NY, United States.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.’?” Last verified 28 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/dont-give-up-dont-ever-give-up/

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