Hear our humble prayer, O God. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to the animals.
Albert SchweitzerWe 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.
Albert SchweitzerJust as white light consists of colored rays, so reverence for life contains all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy, peacefulness and power to forgive.
Albert SchweitzerEthics cannot be based upon our obligations toward people, but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power. I think that this ethic will become more and more recognized because of its great naturalness and because it is the foundation of a true humanism toward which we must strive if our culture is to become truly ethical.
Albert SchweitzerToday it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.
Albert Schweitzer