Tolerance Intolerance Quotes & Sayings

Liberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance or in the notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands happiness; but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance. — Leo Strauss

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left. — Herbert Marcuse

Contrary to popular definitions, true tolerance means 'putting up with error' - not 'accepting all views'. We don't tolerate what we enjoy or endorse - say, chocolate, or roses, or Mozart's music. By definition, we tolerate what we don't approve of or what we believe to be false. — Paul Copan

Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated. — Kofi Annan

Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance. — Bill Maher

I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There's faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there's faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they're not entirely certain they're in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God's mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence. — R. Scott Bakker

Tolerance for intolerance is not tolerance at all. — Bruce Bawer

Tolerance is not a synonym of Weakness — Satyendra Singh 'Shyamal'

Intolerance is the 'Do Not Touch' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness. — Eric Hoffer

Some would call it tolerance, I said. Yes he replied, the same tolerance that overtook ancient Israel..a tolerance for everything opposed to God, a growing tolerance for immorality and a growing intolerance for the pure-a tolerance that mocked, marginalized and condemned those who ramined faithful to the values now being discarded. Innocence was ridiculed and virtue was vilified. Children were taught of sexual immorality in public schools while the Word of God was banned. It was a tolerance that put the profane on public display and removed nativity scenes from public sight..contraband, as if somehow they had become a threat-a strangely intolerant tolerance. "But still, I countered, how does all that compare to what happened in ancient Israel? America does'nt offer its children on altars of sacrifice? "Does it not? he said. Ten years after removing prayer and Scripture from its public schools, the nation legalized the illing of its unborn. — Jonathan Cahn

There is no other subject on which the average mind is so much confused as the subject of tolerance and intolerance ... Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to principles. Intolerance applies only to principles, but never to persons. — Fulton J. Sheen

The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant ... — George Eliot

The disease of intolerance is not communicated only in religious groups. I've seen it infect racial groups, economic groups and even whole nations (where it is often cleverly disguised as patriotism). Intolerance always fences people out. It creates one group we call US. And the rest we call THEM. — Steve Goodier

It's an universal law
intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Tolerance is not infinite patience, but slain patience; patience that has lost its hope and love and has thrown in the towel. — Criss Jami

Confronted with such flagrant acts of intolerance - such abuses of the freedom of speech - a free society must surely do more. For intolerance is the one thing a free society cannot afford to tolerate. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

If God has really done something in Christ on which the salvation of the world depends, and if He has made it known, then it is a Christian duty to be intolerant of everything which ignores, denies, or explains it away. — James Denney

I've found more tolerance, acceptance and inclusion from social conservative groups who have to reconcile that I'm a Republican who happens to be gay ... versus the intolerance the LGBT leaders see me as a gay man who happens to be a Republican. — Carl DeMaio

I can only imagine that future generations will consider us to have been barbaric for our intolerance of differences. — Cathy Burnham Martin

It is very easy to learn intolerance and unlearn tolerance, but difficult to unlearn intolerance, — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish. — Stephen Fry

Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil ... a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons ... never to truth. Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error ... Architects are as intolerant about sand as foundations for skyscrapers as doctors are intolerant about germs in the laboratory. Tolerance does not apply to truth or principles. About these things we must be intolerant, and for this kind of intolerance, so much needed to rouse us from sentimental gush, I make a plea. Intolerance of this kind is the foundation of all stability. — Fulton J. Sheen

[On highly politicized Islamists:] In the name of freedom they demand the right to renounce freedom. In the language of tolerance they demand that intolerance be granted a dignified place at the table. — Phyllis Chesler

Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality. — Anthony Daniels

Liberal attitudes towards the other are characterized both by respect for otherness, openness to it, and an obsessive fear of harassment. In short, the other is welcomed insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as it is not really the other. Tolerance thus coincides with its opposite. My duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him or her, not intrude into his space - in short, that I should respect his intolerance towards my over-proximity. This is increasingly emerging as the central human right of advanced capitalist society: the right not to be 'harassed', that is, to be kept at a safe distance from others. — Slavoj Zizek

But that's always a certain way to recognise a facist: when he's more powerful he kills everything that's different from him, he uses only brute force while law breaks like glass under his boots. And then, when he loses and when he's weak, he invokes the law and tolerance of differences. All of a sudden, he knows by heart every single human rights convention he broke so many times before. — Andrej Nikolaidis

[S]ocial order displays not the absolute presence or absence of intolerance to difference but a spectrum of intolerance. Each of us bears responsibility to some degree for maintaining these protocols of intolerance, which could not be kept in place if every single one of us did not play our part. From bringing up children 'appropriately', to lovingly correcting or punishing their inappropriate behaviour, to making sure we never breach the protocols ourselves, to staring or sniggering at people who look different, to coercive psychiatric and medical intervention, to emotional blackmail, to physical violence-it's a range of slippages all the way that we seldom recognize. — Nivedita Menon

Tolerance of intolerance enables oppression. — DaShanne Stokes

There is no intolerance in the world so great as the intolerance of tolerance, and no bigotry so excessive as the bigotry of the image breaker. To praise the devil is second nature. To praise God is an education. — Elisabeth Marbury

We all appreciate in others the inner qualities of kindness, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, and generosity, and in the same way we are all averse to displays of greed, malice, hatred, and bigotry.
The first beneficiaries of such a strengthening our inner values will, no doubt, be ourselves. Our inner lives are something we ignore at our own peril, and many of the greatest problems we face in today's world are the result of such neglect.
When a system is sound, its effectiveness depends on the way it is used.
So long as people give priority to material values, then injustice, corruption, inequity, intolerance, and greed-all the outward manifestations of neglect of inner values-will persist. — Dalai Lama XIV

Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous. Plato — Will Durant

For example, tolerance designates a real problem - when I criticize it, I am, as a rule, asked: "But how can you be in favor of intolerance towards foreigners, of misogyny, of homophobia?" Therein resides the catch: of course I am not against tolerance per se; what I oppose is the (contemporary and automatic) perception of racism as a problem of intolerance. Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, or even armed struggle? The source of this culturalization is defeat, the failure of directly political solutions such as the social-democratic welfare state or various socialist projects: "tolerance" has become their post-political ersatz. — Slavoj Zizek

All Abraham's sons were taught that God would progressively reveal Himself. God's wholeness has yet to be realized. There will always be gaps in our understanding. Why should we fill those gaps with suspicion, bigotry and accusations? Men do it to women; Jews do it to Christians; Christians do it to Muslims. Yet, all these have an implied duty to Abraham.
pg 54 — Michael Ben Zehabe

The liberal idea of tolerance is more and more a kind of intolerance. What it means is 'Leave me alone; don't harass me; I'm intolerant towards your over-proximity. — Slavoj Zizek

If
we continue to teach about tolerance and intolerance
instead
of good and evil, we will end up with tolerance of
evil. — Dennis Prager

I am he / Who champions total liberty - / Intolerance being, ma'am, a state / No tolerant man can tolerate. — Phyllis McGinley

No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance. — Giacomo Leopardi

The man who is most aggressive in teaching tolerance is the most intolerant of all: he wants a world full of people too timid and ashamed to really disagree with anything. — Criss Jami

There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion. Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance ... Every law-system must maintain its existence by hostility to every other law-system and to alien religious foundations or else it commits suicide — R.J. Rushdoony

Tolerance is carved into the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives and intolerance should not be carved into the U.S. Constitution. — Jay Inslee

Isn't it time we asked ourselves, are we willing to accept any behavior codified within religious or cultural practice? Is there no line to be drawn? If honor killings are okay, then why not virgin sacrifices or cannibalism or sex with children outside the church? We have perversely taken our notion of tolerance to such extremes that we've become tolerant of intolerance. — Bill Maher

It seems obvious that both the religious and the irreligious are capable of varying degrees of tolerance or intolerance, benevolence or malice, depending on how they understand the moral implications of their beliefs. — David Bentley Hart

Political correctness is America's newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people's language with strict codes and rigid rules. I'm not sure that's the way to fight discrimination. I'm not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech. — George Carlin

For all the injustices in our past and our present, we have to believe that in the free exchange of ideas, justice will prevail over injustice, tolerance over intolerance and progress over reaction. — Hillary Clinton

The same philantropists who give millions for AIDS or education in tolerance have ruined the lives of thousands through financial speculation and thus created the conditions for the rise of the very intolerance that is being fought. In the 1960s and '70s it was possible to buy soft-porn postcards of a girl clad in a bikini or wearing an evening gown; however, when one moved the postcard a little bit or looked at it from a slightly different perspective, her clothes magically disappeared to reveal the girl's naked body. When we are bombarded by the heartwarming news of a debt cancellation or a big humanitarian campaign to eradicate a dangerous epidemic, just move the postcard a little to catch a glimpse of the obscene figure of the liberal communist at work beneath. — Slavoj Zizek

The virtue of tolerance is relatively new to political debate; Aristotle did not discuss it. From the way the debate is usually framed, however, one gets the impression that all one has to do to achieve tolerance is to avoid the vice of narrowminded repressiveness. On the contrary, like other virtues, tolerance is opposed by not one vice but two, with grave dangers in each direction.5 The diagram should look not like this: Intolerance Tolerance but like this: Narrowminded Repressiveness - Tolerance - Soft-headed Indulgence — J. Budziszewski

People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence. — Philip Pullman

If you're gay or religious you're always hearing this word tolerance. It's a pathetic word. It's actually just a politically correct word for the term intolerance. — Rupert Everett

Neither tolerance nor intolerance is grounded in science and reason, but they are themselves acts of faith grounded in social custom and the politics of expediency and power — John Money

The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom and openmindedness. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives. — Ronald Reagan

Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, or even armed struggle? — Slavoj Zizek

Be wary of any man who is quick to put down another man's faith. His love for Truth is not deep enough for him to want to explore additional truths outside his borders. The language of light can only be decoded by the heart. Thus, a man with a closed heart is already blind to understand the words of his own faith. — Suzy Kassem

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

ironically the term tolerance is used to justify intolerance toward Christianity. — Nancy Pearcey

Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain. We need to accept the fact that it's not in the power of any human being to provide all these things all the time. for any of us, mutually caring relationships will always include some measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance, pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment. — Fred Rogers

As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance. I was brought up not only to develop the spirit of tolerance but also to cherish moral and spiritual qualities such as modesty, humility, compassion, and, most important, to attain a certain degree of emotional equilibrium. — U Thant

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

People thought tolerance was the opposite of intolerance. Whereas in fact it was some meaningless neutrality. A child, any child, growing up, discovering herself and the nature of her deepest, most native desires - what use was tolerance to a child? It was encouragement she needed, encouragement first to be, then to love, herself. Or himself, whichever. — Jamie O'Neill

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. — Henry A. Wallace

We can cure the disease of intolerance. We must do it if the world is to survive. No us. No them. Just we. — Steve Goodier

If there's anything intolerance can't tolerate, it's ridicule! — Arlene Francis

We live in a world of intolerance masked as tolerance. — Rush Limbaugh

Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Insularity is the foundation of ethnocentrism and intolerance; when you only know of those like yourself, it is easy to imagine that you are alone in the world or alone in being good and right in the world. Exposure to diversity, on the contrary, is the basis for relativism and tolerance; when you are forced to face and accept the Other as real, unavoidable, and ultimately valuable, you cannot help but see yourself and your 'truths' in a new - and trouble - way. — David Eller

Peace is not the absence of intolerance
Peace is a way of life with joy of tolerance. — Debasish Mridha

Not simple intolerance but the tolerance of intolerance, which allows the intolerance to persist. — John Irving

Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance. — George Bernard Shaw

Thomas Henri Huxley often preached tolerance, but in practice he could not wait to go after religion and religious people in the most scornful of terms.
[Curb your enthusiasm,2016] — Michael Ruse

There are two ways of life, one leading to righteousness, which brings happiness, and the other to unrighteousness, which produces misery. One leads to kindness, mercy and sympathy, the other to hatred and cruelty; one to tolerance and the other to intolerance; one to justice and the other to injustice; one to truth and the other to error; one to peace and concord and the other to quarrelling and war; one to mental development and the other to mental contraction. One is the Secular way and the other is the Theological; one is the Democratic and the other the Despotic; one is the sane and the other the insane. — Arthur Findlay

Colonization of the world, more often than not by robbery and warfare, spread Christianity into the Americas and other corners of the earth, just as Islam was spread throughout Asia and Africa. lt is not a coincidence that the two most widespread religions in the world today are the most warlike and intolerant religions in history. Before the rise of Christianity, religious tolerance, including a large degree of religious freedom, was not only custom but in many ways law under the Roman and Persian empires. They conquered for greed and power, rarely for any declared religious reasons, and actually sought to integrate foreign religions into their civilization, rather than seeking to destroy them. People were generally not killed because they practiced a different religion. Indeed, the Christians were persecuted for denying that the popular gods existed - not for following a different religion. In other words, Christians were persecuted for being intolerant. — Richard Carrier

It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling. — Pierre Bayle

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance - it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded. — Fulton J. Sheen

In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite possibly the security of mankind. They rely on something that has worked to get man this far without placing ideals blindly driven by emotion first; they have a sure line and they say, 'No.' That, in a sense, is something I find to be highly respectable. — Criss Jami

Our society's obsession with tolerance leads to intolerance. Simply being a Christian today is an offense to our culture. — Charles Colson