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
cannot describe detail enabling grasp knowledge matters meaning progress purpose
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.
heroes life suffering
There are no heroes of action: only heroes of renunciation and suffering - Out of My Life and Thoughts.
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.
life sunset mind
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'.
life art inspiration
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.
gratitude men heaven
The gratitude ascending from man to God is the supreme transaction between heaven and earth.
kindness heart men
All the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind.
views optimism world
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.
health doctors knowing
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.
carpe-diem kind public-service
Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.