Albert Schweitzer Quotes

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

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

When you say you are in love with humanity, you are well satisfied with yourself.

Being a humanitarian, supporting animal rights activists, human rights activists, it's all the same.

My most firmly held value is what Albert Schweitzer termed 'reverence for life.' I take this seriously; many would say that because I extend it to nonhumans, I take it too far.

Compassion and mercy are important, period. It doesn't matter who's at our receiving end, but we need to be flexing those muscles. It's not mutually exclusive: If you have compassion for children starving in Africa, it doesn't mean you can't have compassion for adults in Africa or animals that are being tortured and abused.

You don't need a religious background to strive for something good, for genuine compassion and love for others.

I believe in preventing cruelty to all living beings in any form.

Courage without compassion can wreak havoc on our civilization.

Kindness to animals seems to me to be one of the most rudimentary lessons of all.

Love is the supreme value around which all moral values can be integrated into one ethical system valid for the whole of humanity.

I am busy with my work. My path is clear. I see somebody dying, I pick him up. I find somebody hungry, I give him food. He can love and be loved. I don't look at his color, I don't look at his religion.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'

The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

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.

Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of others.

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

Compassion is not defined in one form. There's no Indian compassion. There's no American compassion. It transcends nation, the gender, the age. Why? Because it is there in everybody. It's experienced by people occasionally.

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.

We decided that how we react to and treat those fellow mortals, wild and domestic, tells us more about ourselves than, perhaps, some of us want to know.

Whoever saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind

What is the purpose of our might if we do not use it for good.