Quotes About Tolerance

It is interesting to note that the response to me in Swedish press held no ridicule or personal animosity. The Swedes indicated their affection and acceptance of me on the basis that I was a human being first and, second, a scientific marvel instead of an oddity. It was probably the first time that the press had not taken it upon itself to decide what I was--a circumstance that had prevailed from the time the first story broke.

Mr May, you reach a certain age when you don't have enemies any more, just people who find you mildly annoying.

It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.

The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.

I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition - which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

The brief answer is that I have become inured without becoming indifferent.

You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

The connection between religious faith and mental disorder is, from the viewpoint of the tolerant and the multicultural, both very obvious and highly unmentionable.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head. I once even observed the etiquette of an ashram in India, though this was a trial to me.

Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans, we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Find a society that's adopted the teachings of Spinoza, Voltaire, Galileo, Einstein, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and gone down the pits—as a result of doing that—into famine and war and dictatorship and torture and repression. That's the experiment I would like to run. I don't think that's going to end up with a gulag.

We too have unalterable convictions. We too have principles we're willing to fight for, die for, kill for if you like or if you insist. Don't mistake our pluralism, our tolerance and our multiculturalism for weaknesses. We have convictions and principles and we can be offended as well, we can be offended [on free speech and blasphemy intimidation ]

We too have unalterable convictions. We too have principles we're willing to fight for, die for, kill for if you like or if you insist. Don't mistake our pluralism, our tolerance and our multiculturalism for weaknesses. We have convictions and principles and we can be offended as well, we can be offended.

Or, as a famous human jurist once said, 'The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins,' " Archer added.

In Breeze's business one got used to running across the skeletons in people's closets. If Billy's skeleton wore women's underwear, it didn't really matter. Homosexuality on Billy Winston was like acne on a leper.

Nobody's perfect….

Pain is pain. It needs no description.

Life is too short to fight every idiot along your way.

Understanding begets empathy and compassion even for the meanest beggar - Oromis

Understanding breeds empathy.

If only everyone could see what we have seen, perhaps there would be less fighting in the world. You cannot expect wolves to become sheep. No, but neither do the wolves have to be cruel to the sheep.

To Saphira, he said, If only everyone could see what we have seen, perhaps there would be less fighting in the world. You cannot expect wolves to become sheep. No, but neither do the wolves have to be cruel to the sheep.