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Physical misery is great everywhere out here Africa. Are we justified in shutting our eyes and ignoring it because our European newspapers tell us nothing about it? We civilised people have been spoilt. If any one of us is ill the doctor comes at once. Is an operation necessary, the door of some hospital or other opens to us immediately. But let every one reflect on the meaning of the fact that out here millions and millions live without help or hope of it. Every day thousands and thousands endure the most terrible sufferings, though medical science could avert them. Every day there prevails in many and many a far-off hut a despair which we could banish. Will each of my readers think what the last ten years of his family history would have been if they had been passed without medical or surgical help of any sort? It is time that we should wake from slumber and face our responsibilities!
-Albert Schweitzer
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Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.
-Albert Schweitzer
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The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.
-Albert Schweitzer
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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. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.
-Albert Schweitzer
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The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, and 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. Only the universal ethic of the feeling of responsibility in an ever-widening sphere for all that livesonly that ethic can be founded in thought. The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Adversity
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One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Angels
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A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Animals
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Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Civilization
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Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Cruelty
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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
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Death
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But the man who dares to live his life with death before his eyes, the man who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed on him as a gift, the man who has such freedom and peace of mind that he has overcome death in his thoughts--such a man believes in eternal life because it is already his, it is a present experience, and he already benefits from its peace and joy. He cannot describe this experience in words. He may not be able to conform his view with the traditional picture of it. But one thing he knows for certain: Something within us does not pass away, something goes on living and working wherever the kingdom of the spirit is present. It is already working and living within us, because in our hearts we have been able to reach life by overcoming death.
source: http://home.pcisys.net/~jnf/schauth/rq8.html
-Albert Schweitzer, Reverence For Life
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Ethics
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Let me give you one definition of ethics: It is good to maintain life and to further life; it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound, universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Evil
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Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Example
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Example is leadership.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Fellowship
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We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Goodness
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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. Even if it's a little thing; do something for those who have need of a man's help, something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers live here, too.
-Albert Schweitzer
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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
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Guilt
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The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Help
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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.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Ideas
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A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and by financial and other influences which are at its disposal. The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer's receptiveness for new truth.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Integrity
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A man can do only what a man can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.
-Albert Schweitzer
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Kindness
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Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.
-Albert Schweitzer
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The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others.
-Albert Schweitzer
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The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret.....It has come to believe that 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.
-Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize Address, The Problem of Peace in the World Today
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Books by and about Albert Schweitzer