Albert Schweitzer quotes - page 2

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity. (Albert Schweitzer)
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.
Albert Schweitzer
The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.
Albert Schweitzer
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.
Albert Schweitzer
The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust.
Albert Schweitzer
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.
Albert Schweitzer
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.
Albert Schweitzer
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few stones upon it.
Albert Schweitzer
Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. ... humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.
Albert Schweitzer
Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.
Albert Schweitzer
The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. (Albert Schweitzer)
World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.
Albert Schweitzer
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. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.
Albert Schweitzer
The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.
Albert Schweitzer
True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."
Albert Schweitzer
Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.
Albert Schweitzer
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.
Albert Schweitzer
The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.
Albert Schweitzer
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.
Albert Schweitzer
Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.
Albert Schweitzer
The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own. (Albert Schweitzer)
We cannot understand what happens in the universe. What is glorious in it is united with what is full of horror. What is full of meaning is united to what is senseless. The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive - it creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates, and therefore it remains to us a riddle. And we must inevitably resign ourselves to this.
Albert Schweitzer
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.
Albert Schweitzer
Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now always and, indeed then most truly, when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances.
Albert Schweitzer
Every start on an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to succeed.
Albert Schweitzer