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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Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Compassion
The tragedy of life is what dies within a man while he still lives.
—Albert Schweitzer
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Health
Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.
—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
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: Contentment, Happiness, Integrity, Success, Doing Your Best, Action
Be faithful to your love and you mill be recompensed beyond measure.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Love
In the hope of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Gardening
The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today.
—Albert Schweitzer
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: Evil, Ethics
Physical misery is great everywhere out here Africa. Are we justified in shutting our eyes and ignoring it because our European newspapers tell us nothing about it? We civilised people have been spoilt. If any one of us is ill the doctor comes at once. Is an operation necessary, the door of some hospital or other opens to us immediately. But let every one reflect on the meaning of the fact that out here millions and millions live without help or hope of it. Every day thousands and thousands endure the most terrible sufferings, though medical science could avert them. Every day there prevails in many and many a far-off hut a despair which we could banish. Will each of my readers think what the last ten years of his family history would have been if they had been passed without medical or surgical help of any sort? It is time that we should wake from slumber and face our responsibilities!
—Albert Schweitzer
Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstandings, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.
—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
As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Learning, Knowledge
One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Adversity
The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Helping
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
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: Time, Service, Kindness
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, Responsibility, Confidence
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