Albert Schweitzer Quotes About Ethics

Quotes about: Ethics

• 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

  Freedom, Kindness, Compassion

  Albert Schweitzer (1958). “A Selection of Writings of and about Albert Schweitzer”, Boston : [s.n.], 1958 (Boston : H.N. Sawyer Company)

• The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Loyalty, Peace, Rhyming

  Albert Schweitzer (1966). “The Teaching of Reverence for Life”

• 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

  Leadership, Men, Able

  Albert Schweitzer (1929). “Civilization and Ethics”

• I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Compassion, Foundation, Reverence For Life

• When man learns to respect even the smallest being of creation...nobody has to teach him to love his fellow man. Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Character, Animal, Men

• 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.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Attitude, Men

  Albert Schweitzer (2005). “Albert Schweitzer: Essential Writings”

• Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, 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. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Integrity, Character, Independent

  Albert Schweitzer (2014). “A Treasury of Albert Schweitzer”, p.70, Open Road Media

• 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

  Nature, Philosophical, Animal

• Just as white light consists of colored rays, so reverence for life contains all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy, peacefulness and power to forgive.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Light, White, Empathy

  Albert Schweitzer (1965). “The Teaching of Reverence for Life”, New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston

• The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Strength, Spiritual

  Albert Schweitzer, Charles Rhind Joy (1947). “Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology”, Boston : Beacon Press

• Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Respect, Real, Responsibility

  "Philosophy of Civilisation". Book by Albert Schweitzer (1923), translated by C. T. Campion, 1949.

• 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

  Inspirational Life, Integrity, Evil

  Albert Schweitzer (1932). “Civilization and ethics. 3d. ed”

• We must never allow the voice of humanity within us to be silenced. It is humanity's sympathy with all creatures that first makes us truly human.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Sympathy, Animal, Voice

• Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Men, Perfection, Personality

  Albert Schweitzer (2015). “The Light Within Us”, p.30, Open Road Media

• A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Men, Animal, Thinking Man

  Albert Schweitzer (2014). “A Treasury of Albert Schweitzer”, p.69, Open Road Media

• We need a boundless ethics which will include animals also.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Philosophical, Animal, Needs

• Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Reverence For Life, Ethics, Morality

  Albert Schweitzer, Charles Rhind Joy (1947). “Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology”, Boston : Beacon Press

• The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to it. If I want others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see however strange it may be to mine. Ethics in our western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relation of man to man... but that is a limited ethics.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Men, Thinking, Animal

• Ethics cannot be based upon our obligations toward people, but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power. I think that this ethic will become more and more recognized because of its great naturalness and because it is the foundation of a true humanism toward which we must strive if our culture is to become truly ethical.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Thinking, Compassion

• Thought cannot avoid the ethical or reverence and love for all life. It will abandon the old confined systems of ethics and be forced to recognize the ethics that knows no bounds. But on the other hand, those who believe in love for all creation must realize clearly the difficulties involved in the problem of a boundless ethic and must be resolved not to veil from humankind the conflicts which this ethic will involve us, but allow us really to experience them. To think out in every implication the ethic of love for all creation this is the difficult task which confronts our age.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Inspirational Love, Believe, Thinking

• Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Damage Is Done, Giving, Definitions

  Albert Schweitzer (1956). “An anthology”

• The ethic of Reverence for Life prompts us to keep each other alert to what troubles us and to speak and act dauntlessly together in discharging the responsibility that we feel. It keeps us watching together for opportunities to bring some sort of help to animals in recompense for the great misery that men inflict upon them, and thus for a moment we escape from the incomprehensible horror of existence.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Responsibility, Animal, Opportunity

  "Philosophy of Civilisation". Book by Albert Schweitzer, Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, 1923.

• The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Ethics, Reverence

  Albert Schweitzer (2014). “Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography”, p.237, Henry Holt and Company

• Ethics has not only to do with mankind but with the animal creation as well. This is witnessed in the purpose of St. Francis of Assisi. Thus we shall arrive that ethics is reverence for all life. This is the ethic of love widened universally. It is the ethic of Jesus now recognized as a necessity of thought...Only a universal ethic which embraces every living creature can put us in touch with the universe and the will which is there manifest.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Jesus, Animal, Vegetarianism

• Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Respect, Responsibility, Vegetarianism

  "Civilization and Ethics".

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