Quotes about Tolerance

Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his right mind. p. 31

It is when we insist most firmly on everyone else being "reasonable" that we become, ourselves, unreasonable.

Life is easier than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.

It seems clear, from reading the daily news if nothing else, that there will always be some in this world who want their holy wars, who will discriminate, vilify, and even kill in the name of God. They have narrowed down the concept of neighbor to include only those like themselves, in terms of creed, caste, race, sex, or sexual orientation. But there is also much evidence that there are many who know that a neighbor might be anyone at all, and are willing to act on that assumption.

The polarization that characterizes so much of American life is risky business in a church congregation, but especially so in a monastic community. The person you're quick to label and dismiss as a racist, a homophobe, a queer, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a bigoted conservative or bleeding-heart liberal is also a person you're committed to live, work, pray, and dine with for the rest of your life.

Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them.

These fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

Love your friend with his fault.

A gentleman is man who can disagree without being disagreeable.