The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?
Interpretation
Society will eventually reject cruelty towards animals in entertainment and sport.
Albert Schweitzer's quote highlights a vision for the future where public consciousness evolves to abhor the mistreatment of animals, particularly in the context of sports like hunting. It raises questions about morality and encourages reflection on our treatment of living beings, suggesting a necessary change in societal values regarding violence and amusement.
In practice
In a speech on animal rights, one could quote Schweitzer to emphasize the moral responsibility we have towards animals.
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.
Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.
What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
The profound thinker always suspects that he is superficial.
People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
What are you so mad about? That we still have a government? We still have “traffic lights.” We’re sorry. The government’s not perfect, but some people wish it was better, not gone.
That he who hath the loan of money has not repaid it, and he who has repaid has not the loan; but he who has acknowledged a kindness has it still, and he who has a feeling of it has requited it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.