If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

The saying urges perseverance by redefining progress as adaptable rather than heroic. “Fly,” “run,” “walk,” and “crawl” map a spectrum of capacity: when circumstances, health, fear, or opposition reduce what is possible, the moral demand is not to maintain speed but to maintain direction. The line also implies that dignity lies in continued effort, even when it looks small or slow to others. In a civil-rights frame, it functions as encouragement to sustain long struggles through setbacks—boycotts, court losses, violence, fatigue—by insisting that forward motion can take many forms without surrendering the goal.