Quotes By Albert Schweitzer

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

My life is my argument.

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

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.

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

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.