When we are born, the Mysterious One opens a bracket, writes the year of birth and puts a hyphen. He then waits for the last day to write the year of death and close the bracket. It is the same for every human.

For many, the task of making a mark begins immediately after birth. Varying factors determine how far each person goes. It could be environmental factors. It could be social. It could also be genetic.

Whether we know it or not, we face a challenge. The challenge arises from the realization that “the history of the world is nothing but the biography of great men.” To a large extent, even without knowing it, we all try to be great.

Shakespeare said that some achieve greatness while some have greatness bestowed upon them.

He was 29 year old when he led a movement that was inconceivable ten years before. He led it so well that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

It was today, some forty years ago that he was shot dead at Lorraine Hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39 years old.

Like every human being, he had his admired side and his abhorred side. When he died young at 39, the abhorred side of him was forgotten – totally wiped out. He was rehabilitated. He was repainted.

The media who chided him for taking his struggle to the realms the privileged elite felt should be out of bounds, quickly came together to pour praises on him. They all remembered “I have a dream” and conveniently forgot “I have a scold.”

Today, on the 40th anniversary of his death, I present to you quotes from his speeches that when put together would make an “I have a scold” speech.

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

“Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?” “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. “Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people,” they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.”

“My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years — especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“Racism is evil. Its ultimate goal is genocide.”

On his death on April 4, 1968, all newscasts ended their report with a simple sentence – he was 39 years old.

What footprint will you leave at 39? What impact will you make at 39? If you have to leave this world at 39, will the world remember you 40 years after?