Albert Schweitzer Quotes

In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.

Sincerity is the foundation of the spiritual life.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

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. Extract from 'Memories of childhood and youth.'

It's supposed to be a secret, but I'll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help. And encourage the doctor within.

A good example has twice the value of good advice

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

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.

The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed.

The African is my brother but he is my younger brother by several centuries.

The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.

Constant Kindness can accomplish much.

I too had thoughts once of being an intellectual, but I found it too difficult.

Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.

By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used to failing.

Let your life be your argument.

The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.

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.

From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.

It is a man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.

Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside.

I am conscious that meat eatingis not in accordance with the finer feelings,and I abstain from it whenever I can.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

The great enemy of morality is indifference.

The Christ of Theology is not alive for us today. He is wrapped in the grave cloths of dogma.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

What we call love is in its essence reverence for life.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Each act of unfaithfulness toward our inner being is a blot on our souls. If we continue to be unfaithful, our souls are eventually torn apart and we slowly bleed to death.

The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature.

Man can no longer live his life for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe.

At 20 everyone has the face that God gave them, at 40 the face that life gave them, and at 60 the face they earned.

Man's ethics must not end with man, but should extend to the universe. He must regain the consciousness of the great Chain of Life from which he cannot be separated.

Set a great example. Someone may imitate it.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

The doctor of the future will be oneself.

It's not enough merely to exist. Every man has to seek in his own way to make his own self more noble and to relize his own true worth.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

Thought is the strongest thing we have. Work done by true and profound thought - that is a real force.

In case my life should end with the cannibals, I hope they will write on my tombstone, 'We have eaten Dr. Schweitzer. He was good to the end.'

Do something good and someone might imitate it.

I am certain and have always stressed that the destination of mankind is to become more and more humane. The ideal of humanity has to be revived.

Only when an ideal of peace is born in the minds of the peoples will the institutions set up to maintain this peace effectively fulfill the function expected of them.

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.