Albert Schweitzer

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you
are doing, you will be successful.
– Albert Schweitzer

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us
owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
– Albert Schweitzer

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.
– Albert Schweitzer

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find
peace.
– Albert Schweitzer

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
– Albert Schweitzer

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes
misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate.
– Albert Schweitzer

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: The ones among you who will
be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.
– Albert Schweitzer

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.
– Albert Schweitzer

From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.
– Albert Schweitzer

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the
red stoplight. The truly wise person is color-blind.
– Albert Schweitzer

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but
must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.
– Albert Schweitzer

A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint.
– Albert Schweitzer

Serious illness doesn’t bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.
– Albert Schweitzer

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life – music and cats.
– Albert Schweitzer

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.
– Albert Schweitzer

You must give time to your fellow men. Even if it’s a little thing, do something for others.
Something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.
– Albert Schweitzer

Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments,
and know Everything happens for reason.
– Albert Schweitzer

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the
spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.
– Albert Schweitzer

The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value is courageous faith in truth.
– Albert Schweitzer

It is through the idealism of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he
possesses a wealth which he must never exchange for anything else.
– Albert Schweitzer

In case my life should end with cannibals, I hope they will write on my tombstone: “We have
eaten Dr Schweitzer. He was good to the end.”
– Albert Schweitzer

The most important thing in education is to make young people think for themselves.
– Albert Schweitzer

The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.
– Albert Schweitzer

To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of
view seems lower on the scale.
– Albert Schweitzer

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of
others.
– Albert Schweitzer

As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible but more
mysterious.
– Albert Schweitzer

Love includes fellowship in suffering, in joy and in effort.
– Albert Schweitzer

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of
consciousness: I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.
– Albert Schweitzer

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.
– Albert Schweitzer

No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense
of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and
aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty.
– Albert Schweitzer

Example is leadership.
– Albert Schweitzer

It’s not enough merely to exist. Every man has to seek in his own way to make his own self
more noble and to relize his own true worth.
– Albert Schweitzer

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.
– Albert Schweitzer

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
– Albert Schweitzer

The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind.
– Albert Schweitzer

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
– Albert Schweitzer

Man can no longer live for himself alone. We must realize that all life is valuable and that we
are united to all life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship with the universe.
– Albert Schweitzer

If you love something so much – let it go. If it comes back it was meant to be; if it doesn’t it
never was.
– Albert Schweitzer

In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
– Albert Schweitzer

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
– Albert Schweitzer

There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest
creed.
– Albert Schweitzer

What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The
horror of this realization should shakes us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes
and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.
– Albert Schweitzer

It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed.
– Albert Schweitzer

Thought is the strongest thing we have. Work done by true and profound thought – that is a
real force.
– Albert Schweitzer

Grow into your ideals, so that life can never rob you of them.
– Albert Schweitzer

The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by
altering the attitudes of their minds.
– Albert Schweitzer

I decided that I would make my life my argument.
– Albert Schweitzer

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an
absolute stranger.
– Albert Schweitzer

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can
overcome adversity.
– Albert Schweitzer

In the past we have tried to make a distinction between animals which we acknowledge have
some value and other which, having none, can be liquidated when we wish. This standard
must be abandoned. Everything that lives has value simply as a living thing, as one of the
manifestations of the mystery that is life.
– Albert Schweitzer

What we call love is in its essence reverence for life.
– Albert Schweitzer

The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it
means to live.
– Albert Schweitzer

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.
– Albert Schweitzer

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his
will – his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.
– Albert Schweitzer

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

No ray of sunshine is ever lost but the green that it awakens takes time to sprout, and it is
not always given the sower to see the harvest.
– Albert Schweitzer

The thinking person 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.
– Albert Schweitzer

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some
portion of misery to an end.
– Albert Schweitzer

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now. Always.
– Albert Schweitzer

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

Search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
– Albert Schweitzer

The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.
– Albert Schweitzer

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This 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

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
– Albert Schweitzer

We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals.
Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings
on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of
compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.
– Albert Schweitzer

Start early to instill in your students awareness that they are on this earth to help and serve
others; that is as important to pass on to them as knowledge.
– Albert Schweitzer

He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself.
– Albert Schweitzer

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

With a little reason and much heart, one can change many things, or move mountains.
– Albert Schweitzer

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.
– Albert Schweitzer

Who shall enumerate the many ways in which that costly piece of fixed capital, a human
being, may be employed! More of him is wanted everywhere. Hunt, then, for some situation in
which your humanity may be used.
– Albert Schweitzer

Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter – to all these music gives voice, but in such a way
that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a
new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and
clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.
– Albert Schweitzer

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.
– Albert Schweitzer