Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance1 in the entire population.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
In the modern world, self-control buys a good life indeed. Having self-control to spare is rare enough nowadays that the marketplace lavishes2 huge rewards on society's scary new self-control elite3, those lords of discipline who not only withstood all that boring stuff in graduate school, but keep themselves thin by carefully regulating what they eat after flogging themselves off to the gym at the crack of dawn. It's as if they got the news ahead of the rest of us-no doubt by waking up earlier-that self-control may well be the most important trait of the twenty-first century.
Daniel Akst, We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, 2011
Be entirely4 tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess.
Heinrich Heine (1797 - 1856)
The highest result of education is tolerance.
Helen Keller (1880 - 1968), 'Optimism,' 1903
To say the least, a town life makes one more tolerant and liberal in one's judgement of others.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882), Hyperion, 1839
I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
Ralph W. Sockman
Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.
Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924), in John Dos Passos, "Mr Wilson's War"