Tolerating Quotes

“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.”

“Earlier in this book I noted that one of my favorite sayings is “You get what you tolerate.” This applies in spades to your relationships. Failing to speak up about something carries the implication that you are OK with it—that you are prepared to continue tolerating it. As a companion saying goes, “Silence means consent.” If you tolerate snide or offensive remarks from your boss or colleague, the remarks will continue. If you tolerate your spouse’s lack of consideration for your feelings, it will continue. If you tolerate the disregard of people who regularly turn up late for meetings or social engagements, they will continue to keep you cooling your heels. If you tolerate your child’s lack of respect, you will continue to get no respect. Each time you tolerate a behavior, you are subtly teaching that person that it is OK to treat you that way.”

“You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.”

“There must be good marriages somewhere, but to me, marriage had the feel of people tolerating each other, enduring each other because they were afraid to be alone or because each was a habit that the other couldn't quite break.”

“[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.”

“The purpose of any healthy relationship is to find someone that will magnify your life's experiences, not tolerate it or become a spectator of it.”

“Athletes train 15 years for 15 seconds of performance. Ask them if they got lucky. Ask an athlete how he feels after a good workout. He will tell you that he feels spent. If he doesn't feel that way, it means he hasn't worked out to his maximum ability. Losers think life is unfair. They think only of their bad breaks. They don't consider that the person who is prepared and playing well still got the same bad breaks but overcame them. That is the difference. His threshold for tolerating pain becomes higher because in the end he is not training so much for the game but for his character. Alexander Graham Bell was desperately trying to invent a hearing aid for his partially deaf wife. He failed at inventing a hearing aid but in the process discovered the principles of the telephone. You wouldn't call someone like that lucky, would you?Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Without effort and preparation, lucky coincidences don't happen.”

“Tolerating women is surprisingly easier than understanding them.”

“By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.”