This is the absolute, fundamental Principle of the moral, and it is the necessity of thought. The Quiet Conscience We must never become callous. When we experience the conflicts ever more deeply we are living in truth. The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil. Having lived through World War I and foreseeing another even more dreadful world conflict, Albert Schweitzer appealed to people everywhere to stop and think about the futility of war, how it is born of contempt rather than reverence for all life.
Today there is an absence of thinking which is characterized by a contempt for life.
We waged war for questions which, through reason, might have been solved. No one won. The war killed millions of men, and brought suffering and death to millions of innocent animals. Because we did not possess the highest rationality of Reverence for Life.