Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.
Interpretation
Ethics involves taking responsibility for all living beings.
In this quote, Albert Schweitzer emphasizes the fundamental concept of ethics as an inherent duty to acknowledge and respect all forms of life. He advocates for an expansive view of responsibility that encourages individuals to consider the impact of their actions on the well-being of every living organism, thus highlighting the interconnectedness of life and the moral considerations that come with it.
In practice
In a discussion on environmental conservation, one might quote Schweitzer to emphasize the ethical responsibility we have towards nature.
I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late.
Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.
By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.
No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.
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.
The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.
Joy and sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizon
I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?
Futility Move him into the sun - Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, - Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved -still warm -too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.
Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.