Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) was an Alsatian-German religious philosopher, musicologist, and medical missionary in Africa. He devoted the first thirty years of his life to learning and music, and the rest to the service of others. He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work.
Born in Kaysersberg, Alsace, now in France, but then under German rule, Schweitzer studied the history of the organ and its construction. He produced his most noteworthy writings on music between 1905 and 1913, while also a practicing theologian and working as a lecturer at Strasbourg.
Schweitzer was an authority on the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and a noted performer of Bach’s organ music. He published an interpretation of Bach’s music in J. S. Bach, Le Musicien-Poète (1905; J.S. Bach, the Poet Musician.)
Schweitzer’s main contribution to theology was his book Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (1906; The Quest for the Historical Jesus,) which emphasized the significance of understanding Jesus within the context of the Jewish apocalyptic philosophy of his day. His other philosophical works include Kant’s Philosophy of Religion (1899,) Philosophy of Civilization (1923,) and Aus Mein em Leben und Denken (1931; Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography.)
In 1904, Schweitzer chanced upon an article in the Paris Missionary Society’s paper calling for doctors in Africa. Nine years later, he qualified as a physician with a specialty in surgery and tropical diseases, and went as a missionary to Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa, now Gabon. There he established the Schweitzer Hospital and lived there for the rest of his life, providing extraordinary medical care for the natives.
Schweitzer’s later works include Afrikanische Geschichten (1936; From My African Notebook,) and Reverence for Life (tr. 1969.) The phrase “Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben” (“reverence for life”) expressed Schweitzer’spersonal philosophy—that “no person must ever harm or destroy life unless absolutely necessary.”
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The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Awareness
The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, and that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help. Only the universal ethic of the feeling of responsibility in an ever-widening sphere for all that lives only that ethic can be founded in thought. The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.
—Albert Schweitzer
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the human spirit.
—Albert Schweitzer
I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Helpfulness, Happiness, Kindness, Service, Purpose, Goodwill, Destiny, Meaning, Mentoring
It is not enough merely to exist. It’s not enough to say, “I’m earning enough to support my family. I do my work well. I’m a good father, husband, churchgoer.” That’s all very well. But you must do something more. Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it’s a little thing, do something for those who need 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: Goodness, Helpfulness
Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Creation, Evil
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: Service, Giving, Kindness
Be faithful to your love and you mill be recompensed beyond measure.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Love
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
A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Angels
A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Appropriateness, Doing Your Best, Happiness, Success, Integrity, Aptness, Contentment, Action
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
Kindness works simply and perseveringly; it produces no strained relations which prejudice its working; strained relations which already exist it relaxes. Mistrust and misunderstanding it puts to flight, and it strengthens itself by calling forth answering kindness. Hence it is the furthest reaching and the most effective of all forces.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Kindness
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: Strength, Deeds, Acceptance, Difficulty, Good Deeds, Goodness
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
Example is leadership.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Kindness, Goodness, Leadership, Excellence, Action, Example, Virtue
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Compassion
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
The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today.
—Albert Schweitzer
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Kindness, Kind, Thankfulness, Service, Light, Time
Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Civilization
Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics
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
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Helping
The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics
To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Optimism
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
Man has become a superman … because he not only disposes of innate, physical forces, but because he is in command … of latent forces in nature and because he can put them to his service…. But the essential fact we must surely all feel in our hearts … is that we are becoming inhuman in proportion as we become supermen.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Man
Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it’s a little thing; do something for those who have need of a man’s help, something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers live here, too.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Goodness
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