Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer, OMwas a French-German theologian, organist, philosopher, and physician. He was born in the province of Alsace-Lorraine and although that region had been annexed by the German Empire four years earlier, and remained a German possession until 1918, he considered himself French and wrote mostly in French...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionDoctor
Date of Birth14 January 1875
CityKaysersberg, France
CountryGermany
joy soul done
The interior joy we feel when we have done a good deed is the nourishment the soul requires.
eye men humanity
Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil....It is needed in every nook and corner. Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
believe confidence future philosophy power truths
Because I have confidence in the power of truths and of spirit, I believe in the future of mankind.- The Philosophy of Civilization.
circle civilization compassion himself living man philosophy until
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. - The Philosophy of Civilization.
fellow forces gruesome human life nature power win
Through the power which we win over the forces of nature we get also a gruesome kind of power over our fellow human beings. - Out of My Life and Thoughts.
activity actual form medicine putting religion represent talking
This new form of activity medicine I could not represent to myself as talking about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice.
life midst wills
I am life that with to live in the midst of other life that wills to live.
alive console dark ideas ideology inhumanity played reason
No one has ever come back from the other world. I can't console you, but one thing I can tell you, as long as my ideas are alive I will be alive. We live in a dark frightening age. One reason for this is the part played by the ideology of inhumanity
jesus heart animal
We are compelled by the commandment of love contained in our hearts and thought, and proclaimed by Jesus, to give rein to our natural sympathy for animals. We are also compelled to help them and spare them suffering.
art expression adequate
All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it.
light long shining
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?
nature heart men
Man has become a superman ... because he not only disposes oinnate, physical forces, but because he is in command ... olatent 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.
animal men thinking
The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to it. If I want others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see however strange it may be to mine. Ethics in our western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relation of man to man... but that is a limited ethics.
flower home animal
What does Reverence for Life say abut the relations between [humanity] and the animal world? Whenever I injury any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes on the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity.