The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Opinions
An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… The truly wise person is color-blind.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Optimism
Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Evil, Creation
One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Spirit, Spirituality
The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret… It has come to believed that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics
I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Welfare
The tragedy of life is what dies within a man while he still lives.
—Albert Schweitzer
Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. The way in which power works is a mystery.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Life
Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Morality, Ethics
The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now—always.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Truth
A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Angels
No ray of sunlight is ever lost, but the green which it awakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted to the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Faith
Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Respect
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Animals
Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Spirit, Spirituality
One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Adversity
In influencing other people, what you do is not the only thing, it’s everything.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: People
From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Simplicity
You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it’s a little thing, do something for those who have of help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here, too.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Kindness, Service, Giving
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more on it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through experiences of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them. Resistance is only a waste of strength.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Deeds, Difficulty, Good Deeds, Goodness, Strength, Acceptance
Happiness? That’s nothing more than a good health and a poor memory.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Happiness
What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.
—Albert Schweitzer
Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Foresight
Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will – his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Confidence, Responsibility, Self-reliance, Problems
As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Thinking
Just as white light consists of colored rays, so reverence for life contains all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy, peacefulness and power to forgive.
—Albert Schweitzer
Revenge… is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Revenge
A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Paul Tillich German-American Theologian
- Albert Einstein German-born Theoretical Physicist
- Julien Offray de La Mettrie French Physician, Philosopher
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin French Jesuit Scientist
- Jean-Paul Sartre French Philosopher
- Albert Camus Algerian-born French Philosopher
- Henri Bergson French Philosopher
- Voltaire French Philosopher, Author
- Samuel Rutherford Scottish Theologian
- Anthony de Mello Indian-born American Theologian
Leave a Reply