Tolerance Quotes - Page 3

Tolerance. In all my years of debating politics and religion no mind was changed with derision and no thought convicted by way of harshness. You have no right to demand tolerance while deriding others and their beliefs in the process. Want tolerance? Extend it. You’ll be surprised because given it, people will actually listen.

There is no neutral ground when it comes to the tolerance question. Everybody has a point of view she thinks is right, and everybody passes judgment at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeonholed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too, even people who consider themselves relativists.

The important place held by Jesus among the world's six hundred million Moslems... and the agreement of both religions about the necessity for surrender to God as the means of salvation, thus makes it comparatively easy for a Moslem to address himself to Christians: the sympathy and the history are already there.

From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.

… when we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief.

These lecture provide material for the consideration of common factors, in theory and in development, from the viewpoint of the idea of surrender to the Divine Will, reviewing some aspects of the interplay between Christians and Moslems, and introducing material from and about Sufis.

Tolerance is not a Christian value. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty-these are Christian values.

Any religion can be compared to the attic of an old home. Unless the attic is regularly cleaned, it gathers dust and cobwebs and eventually becomes unusable. Similarly, if a religion cannot be updated or cleaned from time to time, it loses its usefulness and cannot relate anymore to changed times and people.

Lightning strikes the earth and thunder heralds the doom but the earth bears it all in silence, teaching us that life may be harsh to us but we shouldn't be so to life.

Everyone is born with a different mind and the same heart.

Righteous, I like that. Kinda fitting when you think about it. If we danced and shared music, we'd be too busy en-joy-in' life to start a war.

Be the tolerance you seek.

Today's marriages become toxic, with resentments, after only a few years. It's one thing to say, 'I forgive,' but most lack the enterprise to do the necessary work that follows. It was the day after that proved who had the wisdom of God and who didn't.
pg 46

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

[Commencement Address at American University, June 10 1963]

In this world, unity is achievable only by learning to unite in spite of differences, rather than insisting on unity without differences. For their total eradication is an impossibility. The secret of attaining peace in life is tolerance of disturbance of the peace. (p. 99)

Be kind to all the people you meet on your journey.

Perhaps we don’t progress, because there are so many views – so many paths to peace and happiness – that we get hung up on each path’s differences. Trying to sort out right from wrong when the rights mean so much to us that we can’t look at them objectively.

Mankind must learn to coexist with each other to create a peaceful world.

More dangerous than bayonets and cannon are the weapons of the mind.

Difference is the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth, and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity.