“If" is a poem written by the English poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling in 1895. The poem is a set of moral instructions addressed to the poet’s son, and it offers advice on how to live a virtuous and fulfilling life.

The first one deals with how to treat others, regardless of their station in life. He writes:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

It should not matter with whom the reader is walking; he or she needs to treat the lowest of the low and the highest in a society exactly the same–with kindness.