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.
Interpretation
We should always listen to our compassion and empathy for others, as it defines our humanity.
In this quote, Albert Schweitzer emphasizes the importance of nurturing our inner compassion and empathy for all living beings. He argues that ignoring this voice diminishes our humanity and that it is through our sympathy towards others that we truly define what it means to be human.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about animal rights to emphasize the need for compassion.
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.
The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china.
The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one's opponent.
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr: "If they would only purr for 'yes,' and mew for 'no,; or any rule of that sort," she had said, "so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?
Form as a goal always ends in formalism. For this striving is directed not towards an inside, but towards an outside. But only a living inside has a living outside.
The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.
Babylon, Learned and wise, hath perished utterly, Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh That would lament her.
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