Albert Schweitzer Quotations

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

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 inner spirit.

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.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

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

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

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.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

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. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

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.

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

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.

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.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

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

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.

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

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.

Do something for somebody everyday for which you do not get paid.

Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

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

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

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

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more on it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through experiences of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them. Resistance is only a waste of strength.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

One truth stands firm. 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.

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.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint.

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

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

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

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

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

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.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

Serious illness doesn't bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.

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

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

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

There are no heroes of action: only heroes of renunciation and suffering - Out of My Life and Thoughts.

The only progress that knowledge allows is in enabling us to describe more and more in detail the world we see and its evolution. What matters in a world-view is to grasp the meaning and purpose of everything, and that we cannot do.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Late upon the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset . . . there flashed upon my mind, unforseen and unsought, the phrase 'Reverence for Life'.

Reverence for life . . . does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful . . . the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many. . . . It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others.

The gratitude ascending from man to God is the supreme transaction between heaven and earth.

All the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind.

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.

Our degeneration, when it is traced back to its origin in our view of the world really consists in the fact that true optimism has vanished unperceived from our midst.

The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us succeed. Each patient carries his or her own doctor inside him or her. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.

Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.

We ought all to make an effort to act on our first thoughts and let our unspoken gratitude find expression. Then there will be more sunshine in the world, and more power to work for what is good.

The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.

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

What the activity of this disposition of ours means in the evolution of the world, we do not know. Nor can we regulate this activity from outside; we must leave entirely to each individual its shaping and its extension. From every point of view, then, world- and life-affirmation and ethics are non-rational, and we must have the courage to admit it.

Do something good and someone might imitate it.

When we observe contemporary society one thing strikes us. We debate but make no progress. Why? Because as peoples we do not yet trust each other.

We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government.

We are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live his life for himself alone.

The greatest living person in the world is some individual who at this very moment has gone in love to help another.

The most difficult thing I have ever had to do is follow the guidance I prayed for.

Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.

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.

Don't stop to ask whether the animal or plant you meet deserves your sympathy, or how much it feels, or even whether it can feel at all: respect it and consider all life sacred.

Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.

It is not enough to merely exist. It's not enough to say, 'I'm earning enough to live and support my family. I do my work well. I'm a good parent.' That's all very well. But you must do something more.

The thinking man must oppose all cruelties no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo.

For those who sincerely seek the truth should not fear the outcome.

Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life.

Awakening of Western thought will not be complete until that thought steps outside itself and comes to an understanding with the search for a world-view as this manifests itself in the thought of mankind as a whole.

I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him with a stick he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse - haunted me for weeks.