All people are endowed with the faculty of compassion, and for this reason can develop the humanitarian spirit.
A man who possesses a veneration of life will not simply say his prayers. He will throw himself into the battle to preserve life, if for no other reason than that he himself is an extension of life around him.
Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.
You must learn to understand the secret of gratitude. It is more than just so-called virtue. It is revealed to you as a mysterious law of existence. In obedience to it we have to fulfill our destiny.
In case my life should end with the cannibals, I hope they will write on my tombstone, ‘We have eaten Dr. Schweitzer. He was good to the end.’
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.
Bach is thus a terminal point. Nothing comes from him; everything merely leads to him.
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.
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.
We are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live his life for himself alone.
The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed.
Nature compels us to recognize the fact of mutual dependence, each life necessarily helping the other lives who are linked to it. In the very fibers of our being, we bear within ourselves the fact of the solidarity of life.
The spirit of the age is filled with the disdain for thinking.
Grow into your ideals so that life cannot rob you of them.
My life carries its own meaning in itself.
Not only is example the best way to teach, it is the only way.
Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter – to all these music gives voice.
We must all die. But that I can save him from days of torture, that is what I feel as my great and ever new privilege. Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself.
You ask me for a motto. Here it is: SERVICE.
The greatest living person in the world is some individual who at this very moment has gone in love to help another.