Daily Inspiration Quote by Albert Schweitzer

Moral ambition is contagious, Schweitzer suggests, but he frames it with a cool-eyed realism about human nature. The line doesn’t promise that goodness will be rewarded, understood, or even welcomed; it simply notes a behavioral fact: people copy what looks compelling. “Wonderful” does a lot of work here. It isn’t “right” or “dutiful,” words that smell like sermons and compliance. Wonderful is aesthetic. It implies radiance, craft, a kind of lived proof that ethics can be beautiful rather than merely correct. That’s the theologian’s sleight of hand: he makes virtue desirable before he makes it obligatory.

The subtext is a quiet critique of moralizing as a strategy. Don’t argue people into decency; outshine the alternatives. Schweitzer, who built his reputation as a public exemplar (doctor, humanitarian, Nobel laureate), understood that modern audiences are moved less by doctrine than by demonstration. In an age of mass media and celebrity before the word “influencer” existed, he’s naming a logic that now runs our feeds: visibility creates norms.

“May imitate it” is the sober clause that keeps the sentence honest. No guarantees, no salvation-by-example. Even the best act can evaporate into indifference. Yet the wager stands: the most persuasive ethics is performative in the best sense - enacted, legible, repeatable. Schweitzer’s intent is less to flatter altruists than to recruit them. If you want change, make goodness look like a life someone would actually choose.