"Our culture divides people into two classes: civilized men, a title bestowed on the persons who do the classifying; and others, who have only the human form, who may perish or go to the dogs for all the 'civilized men' care.
Oh this 'noble' culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different colour or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights...." -- Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1/14/1875 - 9/4/1965), physician, humanist and theologian, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, who founded the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in 1913 in present day Gabon. This passage was part of a sermon he delivered on January 6, 1905, condemning colonialism before he had left for his work in Africa. A vigorous critic of colonialism, Schweitzer believed it caused suffering, enslavement and erasure of cultures in lands conquered by Europeans.
(photo: Dr. Schweitzer at his hospital in Gabon. FPG / Getty)
