Albert Schweitzer Zitate: 25 tiefgründige Einsichten über Musik, Katzen, Begegnungen, Glück und Einfachheit

über Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ansprache bei der Verleihung des Goethepreises der Stadt Frankfurt am 28. August 1928. In: Ders.: Goethe. Vier Reden, C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, München 1950, S. 12 books.google https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&id=g8VOogBLmYYC&dq=%22Es+hat%22

Persönlichkeit

„Das Wenige, das du tun kannst, ist viel.“

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: Straßburger Predigten. hrsg. von Ulrich Neuenschwander, München: C.H. Beck, 2013, S. 133-142.
Quelle: zit. nach Jochen Teuffel: Zweite Predigt über die ethischen Probleme und die Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben (Römer 14,7) https://jochenteuffel.com/2021/11/16/albert-schweitzers-predigt-uber-die-ehrfurcht-vor-dem-leben-zu-romer-147-februar-1919-in-strasburg-diese-allgemeinen-ausdrucke-ehrfurcht-vor-dem-leben-aufgeben-des-fremdseins/; vgl. auch Harald Schützeichel: Zwischen Wellblechhütten und Orgelpfeifen: Die Musik im Leben und Denken Albert Schweitzers https://albert-schweitzer-heute.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/DHV-Rundbrief-2016.pdf. In: Die geistigen Leitsterne Albert Schweitzers, Albert-Schweitzer-Rundbrief Nr. 108, 2016, S. 37 und Fußnote 21

Albert Schweitzer: Zitate auf Englisch

“To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Epilogue, p. 242
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)

“O heavenly Father,
protect and bless all things
that have breath: guard them
from all evil and let them sleep in peace.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)
Kontext: One thing that specially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker's yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks. It was quite incomprehensible to me — this was before I began going to school — why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. It was quite incomprehensible to me — this was before I began going to school — why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: "O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace."

“Seek always to do some good, somewhere… Even if it's a little thing, so something for those that need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.”

Help us translate this quote

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."”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26 "The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life"

“The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable, and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 248

“The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Variante: The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

“Wherever you turn, you can find someone who needs you. Even if it is a little thing, do something for which there is no pay but the privilege of doing it. Remember, you don't live in a world all of your own.”

Help us translate this quote

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.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164
Kontext: 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. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them. Resistance is only a waste of strength.

“The doctor of the future will be oneself.”

Help us translate this quote

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.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

“Soldiers' graves are the greatest preachers of peace.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

“If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

“The demands of Jesus are difficult because they require us to do something extraordinary. At the same time He asks us to regard these [acts of goodness] as something usual, ordinary.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer buch The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Quelle: The Quest of the Historical Jesus

“I am life which wants to live admidst of lives that want to live.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Ich bin Leben, das leben will, inmitten von Leben, das leben will.
Reverence for Life (1969)
Quelle: Die Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben http://books.google.pl/books?id=q7MCqUIN7hkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, C.H.Beck, 2008, p. 111

“Everyone must work to live, but the purpose of life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others. Only then have we ourselves become true human beings.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

“The man who dares to live his life with death before his eyes, the man who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed on him as a gift, the man who has such freedom and peace of mind that he has overcome death in his thoughts — such man believes in eternal life because it is already his, it is a present experience, and he already benefits from its peace and joy. He cannot describe this experience in words. He may not be able to conform his view with the traditional picture of it. But one thing he knows for certain: Something within us does not pass away, something goes on living and working wherever the kingdom of the spirit is present. It is already working and living within us, because in our hearts we have been able to reach life by overcoming death.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for Life (1969)

“The ideal "Life of Jesus" [biography] at the close of the nineteenth century is the "Life" which Heinrich Julius Holtzmann did not write — but which can be pieced together from his commentary on the synoptic gospels and his new testament theology. It is ideal because, for one thing, it is unwritten, and arises only in the idea of the reader by the aid of his own imagination, and, for another, because it is traced only in the most general outline.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer buch The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Quelle: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 296

“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.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 264

“Those who thank God much are the truly wealthy. So our inner happiness depends not on what we experience but on the degree of our gratitude to God, whatever the experience.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for Life (1969)

“Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. … humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26

“We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 309

“The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for Life (1969)

“Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 290

“Indian thought has greatly attracted me since in my youth I first became acquainted with it through reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. From the very beginning I was convinced that all thought is really concerned with the great problem of how man can attain to spiritual union with infinite Being. My attention was drawn to Indian thought because it is busied with this problem and because by its nature it is mysticism. What I liked about it also was that Indian ethics are concerned with the behaviour of man to all living beings and not merely with his attitude to his fellow-man and to human society.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Preface, p. vi
Indian Thought And Its Development (1936)

“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That 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.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

“As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

“Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164

“It is the fate of 'little faiths' of truth that they, true followers of Peter, whether they be Roman or the Protestant observance, cry out and sink in the sea of ideas, where the followers of Paul, believing in the Spirit, walk secure and undismayed.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 32

“Every start upon an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to be successful.”

Help us translate this quote

Albert Schweitzer

Ch. 9 : I Resolve to Become a Jungle Doctor http://books.google.com/books?id=qSihr5VGV4YC&q=%22Every+start+upon+an+untrodden+path+is+a+venture+which+only+in+unusual+circumstances+looks+sensible+and+likely+to+be+successful%22&pg=PA90#v=onepage
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)