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
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 tragedy of life is what dies within a man while he still lives.
—Albert Schweitzer
The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Compassion, Kindness
In influencing other people, what you do is not the only thing, it’s everything.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: People
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
Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Respect
Be faithful to your love and you mill be recompensed beyond measure.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Love
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
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: Kindness, Compassion
Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Evil, Creation
Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Life, Living
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Gratitude
Example is not the main thing in influencing others—it’s the only thing.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Role models, Leadership, Inspiration, Example
As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Learning, Knowledge
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
By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world … By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Goodness, Living
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
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
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
Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Sacrifice
We must all die. But that I can save him from days of torture, that is what I feel as my great and ever new privelege. Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death himself.
—Albert Schweitzer
Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Foresight
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: Thankfulness, Kindness, Service, Light, Kind, Time
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: Helpfulness, Goodness
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
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
The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today.
—Albert Schweitzer
Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics
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
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Compassion
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
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
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Cruelty
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: Problems, Confidence, Self-reliance, Responsibility
The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.
—Albert Schweitzer
Topics: Ethics
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
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
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
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Paul Tillich American Lutheran Theologian
Albert Einstein German-born Theoretical Physicist
Julien Offray de La Mettrie French Physician
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 Presbyterian Theologian
Anthony de Mello Indian-born American Theologian