Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

Your greatness is measured by your kindness - Your education and intellect by your modesty - Your ignorance is betrayed by your suspicions and prejudices - Your real caliber is measured by the consideration and tolerance you have for others.

Character | Consideration | Education | Greatness | Ignorance | Kindness | Modesty | Intellect |

Frank Moore Colby

Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.

Apathy | Character | Love |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Character | Responsibility | Vision |

Lucy R. Goodwin

Words of understanding and sympathy are wonderful instruments for unlocking the hearts and minds of men. They transcend all cultures, turning strangers into brothers, blotting out tolerance and discrimination.

Character | Men | Sympathy | Understanding | Wisdom | Words |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

Character | Endurance | Pride | Religion |

Cecil F. Poole

Until man places on tolerance and open-mindedness a value equal to the value that he places on material possessions, he will continue to be stranded on an island surrounded by his own prejudices, ideas, preconceived opinions, and knowledge that is limited by the horizon of his own ignorance.

Character | Ideas | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Possessions | Will | Wisdom | Value |

Alan Barth

Tolerance of opinions which are thought to be innocuous is as easy, as acts of charity that entail no sacrifice. But the test of a free society is its tolerance of what is deplored or despised by a majority of its members. The argument for such tolerance must be made on the ground that it is useful to the society... that free societies are better fitted to survive than closed societies.

Argument | Better | Charity | Majority | Sacrifice | Society | Thought | Wisdom | Society | Thought |

Albert Einstein

The most important kind of tolerance is tolerance of the individual by society and the state.

Important | Individual | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

Just as life is defined as biological change and death as its lack, so meaning in life is characterized by the application of stable patterns to changing circumstances and the replacing of old patterns of understanding with new and exploratory ones. Meaning is found in the losing of it, the searching after it, and in the finding of it again. The meaning in your life is in flux and is to be found in the flux (the flow) of meaning, which is therefore itself a source of meaning in your life. All this does require, however, the developing of a tolerance for ambiguity, of a willingness to accept the inevitability of change and the precariousness of your present vision, and of an openness to the unending richness of your experience of the world in its manifold variety and diversity.

Ambiguity | Change | Circumstances | Death | Diversity | Experience | Life | Life | Meaning | Openness | Present | Understanding | Vision | World | Old |

René Dubos, fully René Jules Dubos

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

Diversity | Survival | Virtue | Virtue |

W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester

Apocalyptic religion has its merits, but tolerance is not one of them.

Religion |

Jean Guitton

The tolerance of the skeptic… accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the “dogmatist.”

Skeptic |

James Goldsmith, fully Sir James Michael "Jimmy" Goldsmith

Tolerance is a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbours of tolerance are apathy and weakness.

Apathy | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness |

Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

The essence of tolerance lies in its openness to difference.

Openness |

Michael Lerner

What the schools can teach is what we value as a community… love, empathy, caring, cooperation, commitment to others, spiritual and ethical sensitivity, respect for difference, self-discipline, tolerance and honesty.

Commitment | Cooperation | Discipline | Empathy | Honesty | Love | Respect | Self | Teach | Respect | Value |

Arnold Lunn, fully Sir Arnold Henry Moore Lunn

Mutual tolerance of religious views is the product not of faith, but of doubt.

Doubt | Faith |

Albert Einstein

Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man presents his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

Freedom | Man | Order | Spirit |