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.”
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Albert Schweitzer
As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Knowledge, Learning
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
Example is not the main thing in influencing others—it’s the only thing.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Inspiration, Role models, Example, Leadership
As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Thinking
One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Adversity
The tragedy of life is what dies within a man while he still lives.
—Albert Schweitzer
The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today.
—Albert Schweitzer
But the man who dares to live his life with death before his eyes, the man who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed on him as a gift, the man who has such freedom and peace of mind that he has overcome death in his thoughts—such a man believes in eternal life because it is already his, it is a present experience, and he already benefits from its peace and joy. He cannot describe this experience in words. He may not be able to conform his view with the traditional picture of it. But one thing he knows for certain: Something within us does not pass away, something goes on living and working wherever the kingdom of the spirit is present. It is already working and living within us, because in our hearts we have been able to reach life by overcoming death.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Death
Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Respect
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
Let me give you the definition of ethics: it is good to maintain life and to further life. It is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics, Evil
Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Happiness, Living Well, Service, Kindness, Helpfulness, Goodwill, Giving
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Health
A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, 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.
—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
From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Simplicity
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
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: Spirituality, Spirit
Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstandings, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.
—Albert Schweitzer
Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never the correctness, of a belief.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Belief
In influencing other people, what you do is not the only thing, it’s everything.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: People
It is a man’s sympathy with all creatures that truly makes him a man. Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man himself will not find peace.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Compassion, Kindness
Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God’s goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Light
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
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: Self-reliance, Confidence, Responsibility, Problems
The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Awareness
The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Guilt
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
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
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