Tolerable Quotes - Page 6

• The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one, analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

  John Rawls

  Justice, Tolerance, Permit

  John Rawls (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.4, Harvard University Press

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• Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen-the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will-are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them.

  Fanny Kemble

  Blessing, Names, Comfort

  Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, ch. 1, 1863.

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• I'd rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is much so more tolerable when returning is an option.

  Deborah Feldman

  Believe, Ideas, Afterlife

  Deborah Feldman (2012). “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots”, p.105, Simon and Schuster

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• You may have an overall target to achieve with each prospect, but if you are going to have an ideal outcome for each call, should you not also have a tolerable outcome to fall back on? Something you are willing to put up with if things don't go completely to plan, but something that still moves things forward ever so slightly?

  Chris Murray

  Moving, Fall, Target

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• It is often hard to secure unanimity about the borders of legislative power, but that is much easier than to decide how far a particular adjustment diverges from what the judges deem tolerable. On such issues experience has over and over again shown the difficulty of securing unanimity. This is disastrous because disunity cancels the impact of monolithic solidarity on which the authority of a bench of judges so largely depends.

  Learned Hand

  Issues, Impact, Judging

  "The Bill Of Rights". Book by Learned Hand, p. 72, 1958.

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• Making change tolerable is one of the duties of Government.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Government, Making Changes, Duty

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• Let us have no ranting tragedies. Too many charactersNot a tolerable woman's part in the play.

  Jane Austen

  Play, Tragedy

  1814 Mansfield Park, ch.14.

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• An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

  John Rawls

  Religion, Morality, Injustice

  John Rawls (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.4, Harvard University Press

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• There is only one revolution tolerable to all men, all societies, all political systems: Revolution by design and invention.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Wisdom, Men, Design

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• Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Shining, Might

  Jonathan Swift (1841). “The Works. Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published. With Memoir of the Author, by Thomas Roscoe”, p.293

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• How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

  Rose Macaulay

  Selfish, Compassion, Giving

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• The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Degrees, Elegance

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• There is no learned man but will confess be hath much profited by reading controversies,--his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach that contraries laid together, more evidently appear; it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth.

  John Milton

  Reading, Writing, Men

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• Men who can, when they wish to write a document, shut themselves up for days with their thoughts and their books, know little of what difficulties a woman must surmount to get off a tolerable production.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Book, Writing, Men

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot (Stanton). Blatch (Mrs) (1922). “Elizabeth Cady Stanton as revealed in her letters, diary and reminiscences”

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• it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.

  Winifred Holtby

  Ends, Brevity Of Life, Values

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• If you look at US internal documents, they explain very clearly what the threat of Cuba was. So, back in the early 1960s the State Department described the threat of Cuba as Castro's successful defiance of US policy, going back to the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine established the US claim to dominate the Western hemisphere and Castro was successfully defying that. That's not tolerable. It is like somebody saying "let's have democracy in Greece," and we just can't tolerate that so we have to destroy the threat at its roots.

  Noam Chomsky

  Successful, Roots, Democracy

  Source: pennpoliticalreview.org

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• The revelatory or visionary is the province of the 'private' artist, who in order to render his personal world comprehensible or even tolerable, must force others to believe in it and therefore share it. It is said that 'the poet does not wish to be understood, but to be believed.

  Kenneth Coutts-Smith

  Believe, Artist, Order

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• Decency renders all things tolerable.

  Joseph Marie, baron de Gerando

  All Things, Decency

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• There is no existence so content as that whose present is engrossed by employment, and whose future is filled by some strong hope, the truth of which is never proved. Toil and illusion are the only secrets to make life tolerable.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Strong, Work, Secret

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1834). “Francesca Carrara”, p.8

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• The pendulum oscillates between these two terms: Suffering-that opens a window on the real and is the main condition of the artistic experience, and Boredom ... that must be considered as the most tolerable because the most durable of human evils.

  Samuel Beckett

  Real, Two, Evil

  Samuel Beckett (1970). “The collected works of Samuel Beckett”

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• A frozen daiquiri of a scorching afternoon is soothing. It makes living more tolerable.

  Tallulah Bankhead

  Frozen, Afternoon, Soothing

  Tallulah Bankhead (1952). “Tallulah: My Autobiography”, p.94, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured-disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui-in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

  Henry Miller

  Fear, War, Eye

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

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• Sometimes limbo is a tolerable place to be stuck.

  William Boyd

  Sometimes, Stuck, Limbo

  William Boyd (2003). “Any human heart: a novel”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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• An Englishman, methinks,--not to speak of other European nations,--habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of theEnglish nation; he is a member of the royal regiment of Englishmen, and is proud of his company, as he has reason to be proud of it. But an American--one who has made tolerable use of his opportunities--cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of man in these respects.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Opportunity, Royal

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.915, Delphi Classics

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• Some flag waving is good, a lot of flag waving is tolerable, incessant flag waving is crazy and dangerous and easily manipulated by the war party to get people bubbling at the mouth in fear and rage.

  Nicholas von Hoffman

  Crazy, War, Party

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