478 Quotes by Albert Schweitzer

I look back upon my youth and realize how so many people gave me help, understanding, courage – very important things to me – and they never knew it. They entered into my life and became powers within me.

Arguing from facts never wins a definitive victory against skillfully presented opinion.

Perhaps Jesus is asking of you a little task, and, if you find it, later He will ask of you something that is greater. Always keep your eyes open for the little task, because it is the little task which is important to Jesus Christ. The future of the Kingdom of God does not depend on the enthusiasm of this or that powerful person; those great ones are necessary too, but it is equally necessary to have a great number of little people who will do a little thing in the service of Christ.

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.’

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.

In order to make the Kingdom of God a practical reality, it was necessary for Him to dissociate it from all the forces of this world, and to bring morality and religion into the closest connexion. “The law of love was the indissoluble bond by which Jesus for ever united morality with religion.” “Moral instruction was the principal content and the very essence of all His discourses.” His efforts “were directed to the establishment of a purely ethical organisation.

A heavy guilt rests upon us for what the whites of all nations have done to the colored peoples. When we do good to them, it is not benevolence – it is atonement.

Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now – always and, indeed then most truly, when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances.

Don’t stop to ask whether the animal or plant you meet deserves your sympathy, or how much it feels, or even whether it can feel at all: respect it and consider all life sacred.