Strength to Love Quotes
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Source: Strength to Love
Author: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"We are not makers of history; we are made by history."
In spite of this imperative demand to live differently, we have cultivated a mass mind and have moved from the extreme of rugged individualism to the even greater extreme of rugged collectivism. We are not makers of history; we are made by history. Longfellow said, "In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer," meaning that he is either a molder of society or is molded by society. Who doubts that today most men are anvils and are shaped by the patterns of the majority? Or to change the figure, most people, and Christians in particular, are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society.
Context
This line was written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a sermon from his book Strength to Love (1963).
This quote can get a little tricky. On one hand, it kind of looks like Dr. King is saying that people are shaped by the world around them. We are who we are because of the history we've lived. We don't get to change that. And that kind of makes sense, especially in the context of civil rights. Minority groups have traditionally gotten the short end of the stick. They're not exactly out there making history left and right.
But if you look at the context from the entire sermon, Dr. King is really kind of expressing the opposite idea. He's saying that people are so panicked about trying to fit in and uphold the status quo that they don't try to make history—they just go along with it. He's encouraging people not to conform to the way things are (i.e., segregation). He's telling them they need to rise up and make history. Don't let the rest of the world decide how you're gonna live your life.
Hey, we knew we liked this guy.
Where you've heard it
In whatever context you hear this repeated, you can bet the person saying it thinks Martin Luther King is a guy worthy of being quoted, and that makes them okay in our book.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
Is this a little preachy? Well, it is from a sermon.