There is nothing virtuous or noble about being "tolerant" of people whose attitudes and behaviors you approve of. If you don't defend the freedom of even those individuals whose attitudes and behaviors you find disgusting, narrow-minded and offensive, then you are not tolerant. To "tolerate" doesn't mean you like it or approve of it; it means only that you ALLOW it to EXIST--i.e., you refrain from violently interfering. The people who look to "government" to FORCE people to be "nice" are not tolerant. . Larken Rose
About This Quote

The people who look to "government" to FORCE people to be "nice" are not tolerant. They don't tolerate that their freedoms are restrained. The people who want the government to force them to be "nice" are the ones who are intolerant. They may claim tolerance, but they are not tolerant of others who don't think like they do.

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More Quotes By Larken Rose
  1. Love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.
  2. The worship of power is an old religion.
  3. To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.
  4. A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.
  5. There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval
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