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Quotes About Albert Schweitzer
See Philosophy for longer citations from Dr. Schweitzer’s writings, and for sources of the following quotes.
- The fundamental principle of morality is that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.
- The fundamental fact of human awareness is this: “I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live.” A thinking man feels compelled to approach all life with the same reverence he has for his own.
- What we call love is in its essence reverence for life.
- The deepest thinking is humble. It is only concerned that the flame of truth which it keeps alive should burn with the strongest and purest heat.
- It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed.
- The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value is courageous faith in truth.
- The result of the voyage does not depend on the speed of the ship, but on whether or not it keeps a true course.
- Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter – to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way.
- When I hear a baby’s cry of pain change into a normal cry of hunger, to my ears that is the most beautiful music – and there are those who say I have good ears for music.
- The morality we have lived by was fragmentary only. We must abandon it in favor of the complete, all-embracing love expressed in “reverence for all life.”
- By practicing reverence for life we are in a spiritual relationship with the universe; we are in harmony with it.
- 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.
- The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.
- Ethics alone consists in this, that I experience the necessity of practicing the same reverence for life toward all will-to-live, as toward my own.
- Search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
- Everyone has his Lambaréné.
- Start early to instill in your students awareness that they are on this earth to help and serve others; that is as important to pass on to them as knowledge.
- The most important thing in education is to make young people think for themselves.
- It is through the idealism of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he possesses a wealth which he must never exchange for anything else.
- Grow into your ideals, so that life can never rob you of them.
- Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
- I decided that I would make my life my argument.
- Service: Never have this word on your lips, but keep it in your hearts.
- The interior joy we feel when we have done a good deed, when we feel we have been needed somewhere and have lent a helping hand, is the nourishment the soul requires.
- Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lost calmly if they even roll a few more upon it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them.
- To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of view seems lower on the scale.
- The one essential thing is that we strive to have light in ourselves. When people have light in themselves, it will shine out from them.
- The highest proof of the Spirit is love. Love is the eternal thing which men can already on earth possess as it really is.
- 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.
- With a little reason and much heart, one can change many things, or move mountains.
- The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live.
- Judging by what I have learned about men and women, I am convinced that there is far more in them of idealist will power than ever comes to the surface of the world.
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