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About this quote

What does it mean?
Conscience and responsibility cannot be delegated to organizations; each person must care for their brother.
In plain terms
You can't give your responsibility to the government; you must care for others.
What can you take from it?
Keep your personal responsibility for others.

Where it applies

  • civic engagement
  • moral dilemmas
  • political trust

Putting it to work

  • take personal action
  • question state reliance
  • care for neighbors

Questions to consider

  • Who is your brother's keeper?
  • Do you rely too much on the state?

Another view

Organizations can coordinate help better than individuals alone.

More from Albert Schweitzer

  1. Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any k…

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  2. We have learned to tolerate the facts of war: that men are killed en masse - some twenty million in the Second World War - that whole cities and their inhabita…

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  3. There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature unless there is some unavoi…

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