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 |

Walter Savage Landor

We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offense to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silence, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.

Business | Character | Diversity | Jealousy | Leisure | Offense | Opinion | Preference | Silence | Society | Will | Society | Business |

Madame de Motteville, Françoise Bertaut de Motteville

If only man could be induced to laugh more they might hate less, and find more serenity here on earth. If they cannot worship together, or accept the same laws, or tolerate the wonderful diversity of thought and behavior and physique with which they have been blessed, at least they can laugh together.

Behavior | Character | Diversity | Earth | Hate | Man | Serenity | Thought | Worship | Thought |

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 |

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.

Diversity | Truth | Wisdom |

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

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

Diversity | Experience | Science | Sense | System | Thought | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

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

Important | Individual | Society | Wisdom | Society |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of men's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his experience. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist... faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an offensive state.

Arrogance | Art | Diversity | Experience | Individual | Judgment | Man | Men | Mind | Poetry | Power | Reality | Sensibility | Society | Vision | Wisdom | Society | Art | Truths |

Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL

Our purpose is to live in harmony with those cycles [birth, growth, death and regeneration] to develop our peculiar organs of consciousness and creativity to add to the beauty, love, humor, diversity and general interest of the world.

Beauty | Birth | Consciousness | Creativity | Death | Diversity | Growth | Harmony | Humor | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | World |

Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard

In fact we say that an intention is good, that is, right in itself, but that an action does not bear any good in itself but proceeds from a good intention. Whence when the same thing is done by the same man at different times, by the diversity of his intention, however, his action is now said to be good, now bad.

Action | Diversity | Good | Inquiry | Intention | Man | Right | Truth | Wisdom |

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 |