Quotes About Tolerance

“Without tolerance, our world turns into hell.”

— Friedrich Dürrenmatt

“What is a normal child like? Does he just eat and grow and smile sweetly? No, that is not what he is like. The normal child, if he has confidence in mother and father, pulls out all the stops. In the course of time, he tries out his power to disrupt, to destroy, to frighten, to wear down, to waste, to wangle, and to appropriate ... At the start he absolutely needs to live in a circle of love and strength (with consequent tolerance) if he is not to be too fearful of his own thoughts and of his imaginings to make progress in his emotional development.”

— D.W. Winnicott

“Denial is the first line of defence against a problem and also the easiest, since it requires no action. In Saudi Arabia, denial is almost an institution ... it suits the authorities to deny that homosexual activity exists in the kingdom to any significant extent, and it suits gay Saudis (who well understand how the rules work) to assist that denial by keeping a low profile. If it reaches a stage where denial is no longer, possible, however, the authorities are obliged to respond. The choice then is between tolerance and oppression ...”

— Brian Whitaker

“These days, though, tolerance means that you accept the other person's views as being true or legitimate. If you claim that someone is wrong, you can get accused of being intolerant
even though, ironically, the person making the charge of intolerance isn't being accepting of your beliefs.”

— Paul Copan

“The kaleidoscope of experiences you have had this year are deeply meaningful and have enhanced your perspective on what actually matters. You have seen firsthand how fleeting and fragile life is and it has changed your DNA. Your tolerance for bullshit is lessening and although you are not always graceful with how you fight back, I love that you are a scrappy little lady. You are bored with the value system you see celebrated around you. Compromise is sometimes just manipulation and you are learning to identify that. You see a need for more people, women especially, to push back against the system that is in place and you've decided to do more of that. This experience will only turn up the volume on your voice the next time around. Hell yes to this and go go go.”

— Sara Bareilles

“It's evident to anyone paying attention that zero tolerance equals 100 percent stupidity. But you have to understand that zero-tolerance rules aren't about protecting kids. They exist to protect the adults who are too cowardly to make judgments.”

— Jonathan V. Last

“Sorry," said Tristan. "No can do, I've used up all my infidelity tolerance minutes this month.”

— Z.A. Maxfield

“From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?”

— Ann Coulter

“This idea that it's intolerant to object to anyone else's position, hovever, is a complete perversion of the historic understanding of tolrance, which was that one had to have the respect to listen to anyone else's point of view, even one with which one might profoundly disagree. Tolerance did not reject truth claims; it respected them.”

— Charles W. Colson

“On a personal level, to think in time is to accept the uncertainty of life as the necessary price of being alive. To rebel against the precariousness of life, to reject uncertainty, to adopt a zero tolerance to risk, to imagine that life can be organized to completely eliminate danger, is to think outside time. To be human is to live suspended between danger and opportunity.”

— Lee Smolin

“If I was a cake, I would be incomplete unless I was a yellow sponge from Asia; frosted with brown chocolate from Americas; classy and elegant decorated with fresh white cream from Europe, and satin black fondant from Africa. I would be edible only if cooled in the Antarctica and served at a beach in Australia. No race in this world is superior to another but rather deficient without the other. Tolerance is not love but a chance to abolish any opportunity for hatred. Let's keep baking in a joyful and tolerant manner.”

— Gloria D. Gonsalves

“What behaviors are rewarded? Punished? Where and how are people actually spending their resources (time, money, attention)? What rules and expectations are followed, enforced, and ignored? Do people feel safe and supported talking about how they feel and asking for what they need? What are the sacred cows? Who is most likely to tip them? Who stands the cows back up? What stories are legend and what values do they convey? What happens when someone fails, disappoints, or makes a mistake? How is vulnerability (uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure) perceived? How prevalent are shame and blame and how are they showing up? What's the collective tolerance for discomfort? Is the discomfort of learning, trying new things, and giving and receiving feedback normalized, or is there a high premium put on comfort (and how does that look)?”

— Brené Brown

“We don't need holy wars. What we need is tolerance and brotherhood and simple humanity.”

— Arlen Specter

“It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.”

— Quentin Crisp

“Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe anything.”

— G.K. Chesterton

“The book of nature is like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what they want, from tolerance to intolerance, and from altruism to greed. It's good to realize, though, that if biologists never stop talking of competition, this doesn't mean they advocate it, and if they call genes selfish, this doesn't mean that genes actually are. Genes can't be any more "selfish" than a river can be "angry," or sun rays "loving." Genes are little chunks of DNA. At most, they are "self-promoting," because successful genes help their carriers spread more copies of themselves.”

— Frans De Waal

“We can practice tolerance while still holding true to cultural values that protect the institution of marriage as a union between only a man and a woman.”

— Ken Calvert

“Business is not a spiritual matter, and my business decisions are not based on spiritual considerations. When I founded the Essence of Life, a project aimed at teaching tolerance and respectful dialogue, the person appointed to head it was Irit Atzmon, a former colonel in the army. Can anything be more down-to-earth than that?”

— Shari Arison

“Today?-"I don't know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn't know either the way out or the way in"-so sighs the man of today ... This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,-we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compro mise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that "forgives" everything because it "understands" everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“I don't have a tolerance for long meetings. I generally expect to get things over with quickly.”

— Chris Liddell

“Love is not just tolerance. It's not just distant appreciation. It's a warm sense of, 'I am enjoying the fact that you are you.'”

— N.T. Wright

“It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling.”

— Pierre Bayle

“Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different. To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn't it?”

— Bill Konigsberg

“For me, my 50s was the decade when my tolerance for heels faded. I'm in good shape and, at 8 st. 3 lb., I'm still the same weight I was in my 30s, but as you get older, the weight of your body shifts somehow.”

— Marie Helvin

“We are a country based on democracy, tolerance, and openness to the world.”

— Angela Merkel

“The story of the Utah prairie dog is the story of the range of our compassion. If we can extend our idea of community to include the lowliest of creatures, call them 'the untouchables', then we will indeed be closer to a path of peace and tolerance. if we cannot accommodate 'the other', the shadow we will see on our own home ground will be the forecast of our own species' extended winter of the soul.”

— Terry Tempest Williams

“I learned to appreciate repetition. That's why I can dance. It's how I learned to act. I have a high tolerance for repetition.”

— Channing Tatum

“Traditionally, open-minded secular liberal rationalists have not made a case for tolerance.”

— Maajid Nawaz

“To heal will require real effort, and a change of heart, from all of us. To heal means that we will begin to look upon one another with respect and tolerance instead of prejudice, distrust and hatred. We will have to teach our children-as well as ourselves-to love the diversity of humanity ... We can do it. Yes, you and I and all of us together. Now is the time. Now is the only possible time. Let the Great Healing begin.”

— Leonard Peltier

“Tolerance is a form of generosity and it is a form of wisdom. There is nothing anywhere in the Dharma [Buddhist scriptures] that should ever lead anyone to become intolerant. Our goal as Buddhists is to learn to accept all kinds of people and to help all kinds of people discover the wisdom of the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha”

— Hsing Yun

“After all, a society with such an enlightened tolerance of corruption and savagery needed to bear down hard on minor offenses to convince itself that it still had standards.”

— Dean Koontz

“The tolerance of the public is diminishing. We're spending time on the wrong people. It's nutty. There has to be a better way. Why are we stripsearching Aunt Molly from Iowa and letting on Richard Reid?”

— Donald J. Carty

“If we learn to accept our imperfections with humor, as the reflection of our very humanity, we will experience humility and tolerance, we will understand that we are already filled with forgiveness, we will see the gift of our lives, the chains will fall away, and we will be free
free not so much from fear or 'dependence,' but free for love, for life itself.”

— Ernest Kurtz

“Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.”

— Sam Harris

“In Islam tolerance means that Christians and Jews are allowed to live under the protection of Muslims but never as citizens with the same rights. What Muslims call tolerance is nothing other than discrimination.”

— Bassam Tibi

“Tolerance and human rights require each other.”

— Simon Wiesenthal

“The philosophy of jazz represents tolerance, teamwork and inclusion. That's what America is about. The music reflects that.”

— T. S. Monk

“But at the same time, the film industry just got torched. The risk tolerance for the types of movies we're talking about is lower, and the reason for that is that the captains of the industry were asleep at the switch when their core business was being disrupted. And they're never getting it back. In a way, it makes it all the more exciting when the good ones get through.”

— Edward Norton

“I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.”

— Steve Coogan

“Part of building a new nation means building a spirit of tolerance, love and respect amongst the people of this country.”

— Nelson Mandela

“I thank you, dear Brothers, for preaching the love of Christ and exhorting your people to tolerance, respect and love of their brothers and sisters and of all persons. In this way you exercise the prophetic ministry that the Lord has entrusted to the Church, and in particular to the Successors of the Apostles (cf. Pastores Gregis, 26).”

— Pope Benedict XVI

“Tolerance is only another name for indifference.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind. To do so effectively, the world needs a global ethic with values which give meaning to life experiences and, more than religious institutions and dogmas, sustain the non-material dimension of humanity. Mankind's universal values of love, compassion, solidarity, caring and tolerance should form the basis for this global ethic which should permeate culture, politics, trade, religion and philosophy. It should also permeate the extended family of the United Nations.”

— Wangari Maathai

“Tolerance is the only thing that will enable persons belonging to different religions to live as good neighbours and friends.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“We are beset by problems and if we look for their source, we find they arise because of our selfishness, because we tend to pursue our own interests at the expense of others. Our various religious traditions exist to help us reduce these problems. They all teach ways to overcome suffering through cultivating love and compassion, tolerance, patience and contentment.”

— Dalai Lama

“For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, and enemy is indispinsable. So we should be grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us to develop a tranquil mind.”

— Dalai Lama

“We cannot overcome anger and hatred simply by suppressing them. We need to actively cultivate the antidotes: patience and tolerance.”

— Dalai Lama

“We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error. There is no middle ground. We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them.”

— Dallin H. Oaks

“The pursuit of art is a delicate balance between influence and self-assertiveness. As self-realized artists, we all have different levels of tolerance for this mystery. Influence is like Scotch; it's good to know your personal limit.”

— Robert Genn

“Tolerance is a good cornerstone on which to build human relationships.”

— L. Ron Hubbard