“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing”. - Albert Schweitzer Born Jan 14, 1875 – died September 5, 1965. Albert Schweitzer, OM was a French-German theologian, organist, philosopher, and physician. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy expressed in his book, "Reverence for Life". Despite his heroic work in Africa and the thousands of sick and suffering Africans he served, Schweitzer believed his most significant contribution to the world was his painstaking attempt to live by his personal philosophy embodied in “Reverence for Life.” Schweitzer was colonialism's harshest critics. "I will not enumerate all the crimes that have been committed under the pretext of justice. Think of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon people made subservient to us, how systematically we have ruined them with our alcoholic 'gifts', and everything else we have done... We decimate them, and then, by the stroke of a pen, we take their land so they have nothing left at all..." 'I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live.' In nature one form of life must always prey upon another. However, human consciousness holds an awareness of, and sympathy for, the will of other beings to live. An ethical human strives to escape from this contradiction so far as possible." In contemplation of the will-to-life, respect for the life of others becomes the highest principle and the defining purpose of humanity according to Schweitzer. Such was the hypothesis which he sought to put into practice in his own life. His example lives on in the lives of many. -Spadecaller