Albert Schweitzer Quotes

There's a fundamental question that everyone has to answer: What fraction of your life do you spend in service to your fellow man? It's not something that science helps you answer at all. It's one of these questions like, Who are you gong to marry? Science doesn't really help you with the question.

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

My dharma teaches me to give my life for the sake of others without even attempting to kill.

Mother Teresa was asked what was the meaning of life, and she said to help other people, and I thought, 'What a strange thing to say' - but maybe it's the right thing to say.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.

I don't have a personal life. Whatever I have is for the country and society.

Live for yourself and you will live in vain; Live for others, and you will live again.

The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient.

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.

The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I believe that we don't need to worry about what happens after this life, as long as we do our duty here-to love and to serve.

We all have the duty to do good.

When I was in the Army, I read a book by Adlai Stevenson. He said law was as noble as saving a person's life. So at one point, I felt that way too.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

The highest of distinctions is service to others.

It's a really wonderful thing to focus your life on something other than your own personal career and ambition.

Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.

To set the cause above renown.

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'