Albert Schweitzer Quotes

The message is not so much that the worms will inherit the Earth, but that all things play a role in nature, even the lowly worm.

There is no one subsists by himself alone.

Manifold subsequent experience has led to a truer appreciation and a more moderate estimate of the importance of the dependence of one living being upon another.

I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

You have to ask yourself: how much does any one person or one family need? And when you start thinking about the universe as an organism, it's important that we, as components of that organism, take care of each other and ourselves.

Independence ... is middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth

You have to understand that it's a very cooperative world, not only with the environment, with but our fellow human beings. If you do not cooperate, if you do not work together to keep the entire organism going, the whole thing dies, and everybody dies with it. That's a law of nature, and it's existed forever. We're one of the very few creatures that has a choice, and can intellectualize the process.

Everything here is alive thanks to the living of everything else.

All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest.

We are born for cooperation, as are the feet, the hands, the eyelids, and the upper and lower jaws.

There is a deep interconnectedness of all life on earth, from the tiniest organisms, to the largest ecosystems, and absolutely between each person.

We need each other to do things that we can't do for ourselves. If we are intimately connected with each other, we just give things to each other; if we don't know each other we find another way to handle it. If you think about it, each according to his or her abilities and each according to his or her needs is sort of the same thing as supply and demand.

Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.

No man is born unto himself alone; Who lives unto himself, he lives to none.

We need others for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings. We cannot exist without others, and they in turn are affected by everything we do. The idea that it is possible to secure our own welfare while neglecting the welfare of others, or even at the expense of others, is completely unrealistic.

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.

Communion is the law of growth, and homes only thrive when they sustain relations with each other.

We are all part of the ecosystem.

There's an interdependence between flowers and bees. Where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees, there are no flowers. They are really one organism. And so in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else.

Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.

Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.

How beautifully is it ordered, that as many thousands work for one, so must every individual bring his labor to make the whole! The highest is not to despise the lowest, nor the lowest to envy the highest; each must live in all and by all. Who will not work neither shall he eat. So God has ordered that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other, and bear each other's burdens.

We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.

You are because I am and I am because you are. We are one another's strength.