Spiritual Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on Those Who Rekindle Our Inner Light)

“As a rule there are in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready like tinder. But much of this tinder catches fire, or catches it successfully, only when it meets some flame or spark from outside, i.e. from some other person. Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow man. Thus we have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us.”— Nobel Peace Prize-winning German-French theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, translated by C. T. Campion (1924)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on ‘The Spirit Generated by Truth’)

“One belief of my childhood I have preserved with the certainty that I can never lose it: belief in truth. I am confident that the spirit generated by truth is stronger than the force of circumstances. In my view no other destiny awaits mankind than that which, through its mental and spiritual disposition, it prepares for itself. Therefore I do not believe that it will have to tread the road to ruin right to the end."—Nobel Peace Prize-winning surgeon, missionary, and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, translated by C.T.  Campion (1931) 

Quote of the Day (Elie Wiesel, on Why ‘We Must Not See Any Person as an Abstraction’)

“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasure, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” —Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and human-rights activist Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), quoted by Susan Seligson, “Elie Wiesel (Hon.’74), Spokesman for Peace and Human Rights, Dies at 87,” BU Today, July 3, 2016

Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on ‘The Spirit Generated by Truth’)

“One belief of my childhood I have preserved with the certainty that I can never lose it: belief in truth. I am confident that the spirit generated by truth is stronger than the force of circumstances. In my view no other destiny awaits mankind than that which, through its mental and spiritual disposition, it prepares for itself. Therefore I do not believe that it will have to tread the road to ruin right to the end.” — Alsatian physician, theologian, humanitarian—and Nobel Peace Prize laureate—Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, translated by Antje Bultmann Lemke (1931)

Quote of the Day (Lech Walesa, on ‘Polish Aspirations to Freedom’)

“I think that all nations of the world have the right to life in dignity. I believe that, sooner or later, the rights of individuals, of families, and of entire communities will be respected in every corner of the world. Respect for civic and human rights in Poland and for our national identity is in the best interest of all Europe. For, in the interest of Europe is a peaceful Poland, and the Polish aspirations to freedom will never be stifled. The dialogue in Poland is the only way to achieving internal peace and that is why it is also an indispensable element of peace in Europe.”—Former Polish President, union leader, and democracy icon Lech Walesa, “Nobel Peace Prize Address,” Dec. 11, 1983

Lech Walesa was born 75 years ago today in Popowo, Poland. The arc of his career—first leading the exhilarating battle for freedom in Eastern Europe, then increasingly marginalized in this region as it embraces the worst form of nationalism—is familiar but dismaying.

In 1980, Walesa sparked a series of strikes that won for Solidarity the right to represent workers. The free world cheered again as he endured house arrest and systematic harassment during Polish General Jaruzelski's imposition of martial law. Late in the decade, he proceeded from triumph to triumph, as Solidarity negotiated the right to free elections in Poland. A decade after the Gdansk strike, he became the first freely elected President of Poland. 

Unfortunately, Walesa was less adroit as President than as dissident and union leader. His alienation of former allies and inability to ensure a stable post-communist economy ensured a narrow defeat at the polls in his 1995 re-election bid—ironically enough, to a former communist functionary.

In the wake of that defeat, many believed that the freedoms Walesa had helped secure would survive in his homeland. But, while there has been no going back to Poland’s communist past, the nation has taken another problematic political turn, with the ruling nationalist Law and Justice Party supplanting liberal news anchors and talk-show hosts on state media with more congenial right-wing voices. At the same time, the new leadership also packed the Constitutional Court with five justices of their own liking and, particularly heinously, adopted a law (since modified) restricting public debate on the Holocaust.

Under the new regime, Walesa’s once-bright star has dimmed. He’s been forced to deny accusations that he served as a communist informer in the 1970s before he rose up the union ladder. More recently, he was pointedly excluded from any speaking role at recent anniversary celebrations of Solidarity. 

Poland is “now being destroyed,” Walesa explained to Bloomberg in discussing why, in his mid-70s, he felt compelled to step back into the political arena to monitor his country’s elections. His case illustrates how voters the world over, riven by socioeconomic discontent, might turn away from the liberal free-trade regime that preserved European collective security after WWII.