TOLERANCE QUOTES
quotations about tolerance
Toleration is being wise enough to have no difference with those who differ from us.
PAUL CHATFIELD
attributed, Day's Collacon
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
KARL R. POPPER
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Tolerance too is learned in discussion, and, as history shows, is only so learned. In all customary societies bigotry is the ruling principle. In rude places to this day any one who says anything new is looked on with suspicion, and is persecuted by opinion if not injured by penalty. One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It is, as common people say, so 'upsetting;' it makes you think that, after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded; it is certain that till now there was no place allotted in your mind to the new and startling inhabitant, and now that it has conquered an entrance you do not at once see which of your old ideas it will or will not turn out, with which of them it can be reconciled, and with which it is at essential enmity. Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it. Even nations with long habits of discussion are intolerant enough. In England, where there is on the whole probably a freer discussion of a greater number of subjects than ever was before in the world, we know how much power bigotry retains. But discussion, to be successful, requires tolerance. It fails wherever, as in a French political assembly, any one who hears anything which he dislikes tries to howl it down. If we know that a nation is capable of enduring continuous discussion, we know that it is capable of practicing with equanimity continuous tolerance.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Toleration is odious to the intolerant.
EDMUND BURKE
The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke
In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Bitter internecine hatreds, based on such differences, are signs, not of earnestness of belief, but of that fanaticism which, whether religious or anti-religious, democratic or anti-democratic, is itself but a manifestation of the gloomy bigotry which has been the chief factor in the downfall of so many, many nations.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
address delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.
HERMANN HESSE
Siddhartha
Tolerance should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Tolerance is the only real test of civilization.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Love, not tolerance, is the supreme virtue, the true yardstick and ultimate determiner of how we are to treat one another. Tolerance CAN be exactly what's needed in a situation ... or it can be a huge copout, the easy path that does neither party any good.
CURTISS P. DWYER
"Tolerance ... rightly understood", Quantico Sentry, May 25, 2017
Intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education.
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
August 1914
It is necessary to be tolerant, in order to be tolerated.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
It is of paramount importance that we teach younger generations the intrinsic values of tolerance -- a much maligned yet ultimately universal necessity. We live in a world where intolerance and its associated verbal and physical violence are increasing daily.
GEORGE SUCHETT-KAYE
"The Virtue of Tolerance -- Lessons from a 17th Century Attic", Conatus News, May 16, 2017
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
attributed, Be Reasonable: Selected Quotations for Inquiring Minds
Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
VOLTAIRE
Philosophical Dictionary
Tolerance is a basic pillar of democracy and the bulwark against totalitarian patterns of action and regimes.
WILLI MERNYI
"Discrimination rising, tolerance in decline in Germany, Austria", Daily Sabah, May 5, 2017
Tolerance is seen as a virtue because of its concern for the common good. Once tolerance is cut loose from this larger moral vision, however, and becomes shackled to notions of individual freedom to do what one pleases absent much consideration of the common good, it becomes quite a different sort of beast.
D. A. CARSON
The Intolerance of Tolerance
Tolerance is nothing more than patience with boundaries.
H. THOMPSON BARNHART III
P.S. Grandma Says
Tolerance is key in unlocking all closed doors.
MARINA FINCI
"Open air exhibition 'Tolerance' kick starts Europe Day celebration in BiH", European Western Balkans, May 9, 2017
The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss