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

“Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Again and again their will-to-live becomes, as it were, intoxicated: spring sunshine, opening flowers, moving clouds, waving fields of grain — all affect it. The manifold will-to-live, which is known to us in the splendid phenomena in which it clothes itself, grasps at their personal wills. They would fain join their shouts to the mighty symphony which is proceeding all around them. The world seem beauteous…but the intoxication passes. Dreadful discords only allow them to hear a confused noise, as before, where they had thought to catch the strains of glorious music. The beauty of nature is obscured by the suffering which they discover in every direction. And now they see again that they are driven about like shipwrecked persons on the waste of ocean, only that the boat is at one moment lifted high on the crest of the waves and a moment later sinks deep into the trough; and that now sunshine and now darkening clouds lie on the surface of the water.
And now they would fain persuade themselves that land lies on the horizon toward which they are driven. Their will-to-live befools their intellect so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like to see it. It forces this intellect to show them a map which lends support to their hope of land. Once again they essay to reach the shore, until finally their arms sink exhausted for the last time and their eyes rove desperately from wave to wave. …
Thus it is with the will-to-live when it is unreflective.
But is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we either drift aimlessly through lack of reflection or sink in pessimism as the result of reflection? No. We must indeed attempt the limitless ocean, but we may set our sails and steer a determined course.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

“Only when an ideal of peace is born in the minds of the peoples will the institutions set up to maintain this peace effectively fulfill the function expected of them.”

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Albert Schweitzer

The Problem of Peace (1954)

“The last fact which knowledge can discover is that the world is a manifestation, and in every way a puzzling manifestation, of the universal will to live.”

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Albert Schweitzer

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

“We do not have a complete and satisfying knowledge of the world. We are reduced to the simple conclusion that everywhere in the world there is life like ourselves and that all life is shrouded in mystery. A true acquaintance with the world consists in being filled with a sense of the mystery of existence and life. This mystery becomes only more mysterious with every advance in scientific research. To be filled with the mystery of life is like that which is called in the language of mysticism the "wise ignorance," an ignorance which is nonetheless knowledge of the essential.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 304

“The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own.”

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Albert Schweitzer

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

“If rational thought thinks itself out to a conclusion, it arrives at something non-rational which, nevertheless, is a necessity of thought. This is the paradox which dominates our spiritual life. If we try to get on without this non-rational element, there result views of the world and of life which have neither vitality nor value.”

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Albert Schweitzer

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

“The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Radio appeal for peace, Oslo, Norway (30 March 1958)

“I have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because other boys asked me to, but this sport was soon made impossible for me by the treatment of the worms that were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from going.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

“From my youth onwards, I have felt sure that all thought which thinks itself out to an issue ends in mysticism. In the stillness of the African jungle I have been able to work out this thought and give it expression.”

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Albert Schweitzer

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

“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.”

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Albert Schweitzer

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

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

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Albert Schweitzer

Epilogue, p. 235 http://books.google.com/books?id=jHuYuLugqBAC&q=%22The+ethic+of+Reverence+for+Life+is+the+ethic+of+Love+widened+into+universality%22&pg=PA235#v=onepage
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)

“What has been presented as Christianity during these nineteen centuries is only a beginning, full of mistakes, not full blown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Epilogue, p. 241
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)

“Only at quite rare moments have I felt really glad to be alive. I could not but feel with a sympathy full of regret all the pain that I saw around me, not only that of men but that of the whole creation. From this community of suffering I have never tried to withdraw myself. It seemed to me a matter of course that we should all take our share of the burden of pain which lies upon the world.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for Life (1969)

“I was convinced — and I am so still — that the fundamental principles of Christianity have to be proved true by reasoning, and by no other method. Reason, I said to myself, is given us that we may bring everything within the range of its action, even the most exalted ideas of religion. And this certainty filled me with joy.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

“Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Letter to a Japanese Animal Welfare Society (1961)

“Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for Life (1969)

“World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.”

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Albert Schweitzer

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

“Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make Him live. But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus.”

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Albert Schweitzer buch The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Quelle: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 4

“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.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933), Ch. 13, p. 188
Kontext: 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. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, and that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help. Only the universal ethic of the feeling of responsibility in an ever-widening sphere for all that lives — only that ethic can be founded in thought. … The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.

“Modern Christianity must always reckon with the possibility of having to abandon the historical figure of Jesus. Hence it must not artificially increase his importance by referring all theological knowledge to him and developing a ‘christo-centric’ religion: the Lord may always be a mere element in ‘religion’, but he should never be considered its foundation. (p. 402)”

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Albert Schweitzer

The Quest of the Historical Jesus 2nd edition (1913)

“Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.”

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Albert Schweitzer

This quote was attributed to Albert Schweitzer by Rachel Carson on p. 17 of her seminal work Silent Spring (1962), and is widely cited on various Internet websites, but an actual source from Schweitzer’s works is elusive.
Disputed

“The good conscience is an invention of the devil.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Variant translation: The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.
Kulturphilosophie (1923)

“We came to a tree which was still bare, and on which the birds were singing out gaily in the morning, without any fear of us. Then stooping over like an Indian on the hunt, my companion placed a pebble in the leather of his sling and stretched it. Obeying his peremptory glance I did the same, with frightful twinges of conscience, vowing firmly that I would shoot when he did. At that very moment the church bells began to sound, mingling with the song of the birds in the sunshine. It was the warning bell that came a half-hour before the main bell. For me it was a voice from heaven. I threw the sling down, scaring the birds away, so that they were safe from my companion's sling, and fled home. And ever afterwards when the bells of Holy Week ring out amidst the leafless trees in the sunshine I remember with moving gratitude how they rang into my heart at that time the commandment: Thou shalt not kill.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

“What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake 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.”

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Albert Schweitzer

The Problem of Peace (1954)

“Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

“When in the spring the withered gray of the pastures gives place to green, this is due to the millions of young shoots which sprout up freshly from the old roots. In like manner the revival of thought which is essential for our time can only come through a transformation of the opinions and ideals of the many brought about by individual and universal reflection about the meaning of life and of the world.”

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Albert Schweitzer

Quelle: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 10

“This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of His existence. That the historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self-evident. We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus came to birth. And even when He was once more recalled to life. He was still, like Lazarus of old, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes — the grave-clothes of the dogma of the Dual Nature.”

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Albert Schweitzer buch The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Quelle: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 3

“A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and blacks. What must be the general character of the intercourse between them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or my inferior? I must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in every one, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself; but the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. The negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: "I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother."”

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Albert Schweitzer

Ch. VII, Social Problems in the Forest, p. 130 https://archive.org/stream/ontheedgeofthepr007259mbp#page/n163/mode/2up (1924 translation by Ch. Th. Campion); Schweitzer later repudiated such statements, saying "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed.", as quoted in [Forrow, Lachlan, Foreword, Russell, C.E.B., African Notebook, Syracuse University Press, Albert Schweitzer library, 2002, 978-0-8156-0743-4, http://books.google.com/books?id=qa-TVXEkY3sC&pg=PR13, 23 June 2017, xiii]
Variant:
The African is my brother — but he is my younger brother by several centuries.
As quoted in The Observer (23 October 1955)
On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (1922)