My Personal Hero

Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

Philosopher, Humanitarian, Theologian, Physician, Professor, Missionary, Author, Composer, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Dr Schweitzer's 'Reverence for Life' ethic embraced not only his fellow human beings, but was
extended thoughtfully and caringly across the spectrum of life, even to insects and plant life, and that is exactly how I feel about what I refer to as God's OTHER children.

I cannot, and will not, be convinced that God doesn't love His precious animals at least as much as He loves us!  And that He doesn't feel pain and disappointment over the agony and lack of respect that we put them through!  He created them just as He created us, with their own inherent worth and with their own will to live, entirely separate from ~ and independent of ~ the worth and the will-to-live of our sadly egocentric race, and I've been especially blessed to discover that Dr Schweitzer felt just like I do!   

For me, Dr Schweitzer is a hero among heroes. He was an exceptionally forward thinker for his
time, unconcerned by ridicule; unfortunately, this code of 'true ethics' is still very
forward-thinking, and I have drawn great inspiration and solace from his fearlessness.

Some of my very favorite quotes from Dr Schweitzer

[Quoting Schweitzer from The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer, Edited by Charles Joy] "It seems almost something abnormal that over a portion of the earth's surface nature should be nothing and man everything."  

"A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as well as that of his fellowman, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help."

"Directed toward animals, reverence for life means, first, that killing animals may be neither drama nor sport!" [Italics in the original]  

"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."  

"A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to aid all life which he is able to help, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. If he goes out into the street after a rainstorm and sees a worm which has strayed there, he reflects that it will certainly dry up in the sunshine if it does not quickly regain the damp soil into which it can creep, and so he helps it back from the deadly paving stone into the lush grass. Should he pass by an insect which has fallen into a pool, he spares the time to reach a leaf or stalk on which it may clamber and save itself."   

"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."  

[Quoting from Indian Thought and Its Development]  "The principle of not killing or harming should not be considered as something in itself but as the servant of compassion and subordinate to it.  Therefore, it must come to terms with reality in practical fashion.  A true reverence for ethics is shown in the fact that man recognizes the difficulties inherent in it."  

[Quoting from Philosophy of Civilization]  "Descartes' philosophizing begins with the sentence, 'I think, therefore I am.'  With this miserable, arbitrarily chosen beginning, it finds itself irrevocably committed on the road to the abstract.  It never finds the door to ethics and it is caught like a prisoner in a dead world- and life-view."

"True philosophy must proceed from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness--'I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live.'  This is not a subtly reasoned dogma.  Day by day, hour by hour, I move in it.  In every moment of reflection it stands before me anew.  A vital world- and life-view that sees into all facts of being bursts continuously forth from it as from never-withering roots.  The mysticism of ethical communion with being grows out of it."

[Quoting Schweitzer from The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer, Edited by Charles Joy] "I must interpret the life around me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine."

[Quoting Schweitzer from The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer, Edited by Charles Joy] "We must never become callous. When we experience the conflicts ever more deeply we are living in truth. The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil."

[Quoting Schweitzer from On the Edge of the Primeval Forest & More From the Primeval Forest] "To think out in every implication the ethic of love for all creation -- this is the difficult task which confronts our age."  

"Let no one regard as light the burden of his responsibility. While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on, while the moans of thirsty animals in railway trucks sound unheard, while so much brutality prevails in our slaughterhouses... we all bear guilt. Everything that lives has value as a living thing, as one of the manifestations of the mystery that is life."  

"The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret . . . It has come to believe that 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." - Nobel Peace Prize address: The Problem of Peace in the World Today  

"Our civilization lacks humane feeling. We are humans who are insufficiently humane! We must realize that and seek to find a new spirit. We have lost sight of this ideal because we are solely occupied with thoughts of men instead of remembering that our goodness and compassion should extend to all creatures. Religion and philosophy have not insisted as much as they should on the fact that our kindness should include all living creatures." - Letter to Aida Flemming, 1959  

"When in the spring the withered gray of the fields gives way to a carpet of green, this is because millions of shoots are springing up anew from the roots. Our age must achieve spiritual renewal. It can do so only in one way: the masses of the people must reflect upon the nature of true goodness. Out of such reflection, new principles and ideas will inevitably arise. As the trees bear the same fruit anew year after year, so from generation to generation all worthwhile ideas must be born anew in the thinking of mankind." 

[After almost being pressured by other boys to sling rocks at birds] "From that day onward I took courage to emancipate myself from the fear of men, and whenever my inner convictions were at stake I let other people's opinions weigh less with me than they had done previously.   I tried also to unlearn my former dread of being laughed at by my school-fellows.   This early influence upon me of the commandment not to kill or to torture other creatures is the great experience of my youth.   By the side of that all others are insignificant." 

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