35 Phrases About Tolerance to Teach Values to Children

This collection of phrases about tolerance can help you reflect on and educate your children on one of the most important values.
35 Phrases About Tolerance to Teach Values to Children

Last update: 11 October, 2022

Today, we want to present a selection of famous phrases about tolerance from artists, athletes, and philosophers. Tolerance is one of the indispensable values to make the world a better place. It’s linked to non-violence, respect, and peace. For this reason, it’s important that it’s always present in the education of our children.

Unfortunately, the various forms of intolerance still generate major problems worldwide. But if we educate the new generations correctly, we can do our bit to ensure a better future for them.

You’ll see how useful these phrases about tolerance are to help you reflect on the importance of instilling this value in children. You can’t miss them!

Phrases on tolerance to educate children on values

Young children from different cultures and backgrounds.

Learning to tolerate is basic to treat others with respect, regardless of their culture, race, or beliefs. So, learn and teach these phrases to your children, so that they incorporate this important value in a very emotional way:

  1. “I do not like the word tolerance, but could not think of a better one. Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one.” –Mahatma Ghandi
  2. “Nothing is more attractive in a man than his courtesy, his patience and his tolerance.” -Cicero-
  3. “That two and two are necessarily four is an opinion that many of us share. But if someone sincerely thinks otherwise, say so. Here we are not surprised at anything.” -Antonio Machado
  4. “When I meet someone I don’t care if it’s white, black, Jewish or Muslim. It is enough for me to know that he is a human being.”-Walt Whitman
  5. “Be flexible like a reed, not stiff like a cypress.” -The Talmud-
  6. Tolerance means knowing each one that he has in front of him someone who is his brother, who, with the same right as he, thinks otherwise, conceives public happiness in the opposite way.” -Antonio Maura
  7. “Moderation, tolerance and justice rule the heart and disarm discontent.” –Francisco de Paula Santander-
  8. “Art and culture increase harmony, tolerance and understanding among people.” –Matilde Asensi
  9. “Compassion naturally gives rise to tolerance and forgiveness. It allows us to appreciate that even someone we think of as an enemy is a human being with a right to be happy. This is one of the reasons why it’s said that your enemy can be your best teacher. He or she teaches the possibility of unconditional compassion..”Dalai Lama
  10. The highest result of education is tolerance.” -Helen Keller
  11. “Tolerance means excusing the mistakes of others. Tact means not noticing them.”-Arthur Schnitzler
  12. “Tolerance is anger dominated by reason.” -Peter Ustinov
  13. “If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.” -John Fitzgerald Kennedy
  14. “Train your mind to doubt and your heart to tolerance.” –Georg Christop Lichtenberg
  15. What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.” -Albert Einstein
  16. “Justice exists only in hell; in heaven there is grace.”-Gertrud Von Le Fort-
  17. “It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling.”-Pierre Bayle
  18. “He who does not have great tolerance will not be of great value.” -Juan Eusebio Nieremberg-
  19. “Civilization does not consist of exporting a lot, nor in walking in a hurry, nor in writing with spelling. It consists of the sweetness of customs, of love and tolerance, of the native elevation of feelings and ideas.” -Rafael Barret
  20. Tolerance is that which separates children from adults.” -Doménico Cieri Estrada-
  21. “The world agonizes due to a lack of tolerance, I am not willing to contribute to it, in the very little that I am, but I do not stop being a man.”-Max Aub-
  22. “Toleration is the best religion.” -Víctor Hugo
  23. “We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.” -Voltaire-
  24. “What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”Henry David Thoreau
  25. Travel teaches tolerance.” -Benjamin Disraeli
  26. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.” -Martin Scorsese
  27. “If we would please in society, we must be prepared to be taught many things we know already by people who do not know them.”-Chamfort-
  28. “Balanced tolerance is the germ of liberty and harmony.”-Francis Castel
  29. Tolerance has a far greater scope than indifference, for it is the fruit of experience and reasoning.” -Arturo Torres
  30. “The fanaticisms that we should fear most are those that can be confused with tolerance.”-Fernando Arrabal
  31. I do not have that common defect of judging others according to who I am. I easily believe things different from my own. Because I feel committed to one form, I do not force it on the rest of the world, as everyone else does; and I create and conceive a thousand opposite ways of life; and contrary to what is normal, I accept difference more easily than the resemblance between us. I unburden a being as much as possible of my conditions and principles by considering him simply in himself, without any relation, by reconstructing him according to his own model.” -Michel de Montaigne
  32. Tolerance makes difference possible; difference makes tolerance necessary.” -Michael Walzer
  33. “Modern man, as he peers out into the world, goes looking for a mirror that will reflect his image to him, and when he finds it, he is bewildered and often wants to break the mirror. We have become terribly incapable of accepting that there are men who are different from us. Tolerance, the favorite word of modern man, has been invented to fill this void. But “tolerance” is not understanding, nor is it proper treatment. It is simply keeping one’s distance, respectfully, of course, from that with which one does not know how to deal.” -Maria Zambrano
  34. I am very tolerant. I am not a moralist. I have too great a sense of the shortness of life and its temptations to rule red lines.” -Virginia Woolf
  35. I have learned that the same person can embody the mask of triumph and the face of defeat“. -Irene Vallejo
A chalkboard drawing of the world surrounded by stick figures holding hands.

Phrases about tolerance: A resource to educate children on values

These phrases about tolerance are a useful resource to remind us how important it is to accept all people equally, no matter how they are. In today’s world, unfortunately, there are still many violent acts that occur as a result of intolerance.

For this reason, it’s important that we educate children on the value of tolerance and respect from a very young age. This way, we can get them to accept others as the human beings they are, regardless of any differences.

We hope that these phrases will help you reflect on this value so that you can contribute your grain of sand and make this world a better place.


All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.


  • Cisneros, I. H. (1996). Tolerancia: Voltaire entre nosotros. Revista mexicana de ciencias políticas y sociales, 41(165), 53-65.
  • Gómez, M. S. (2005). Antecedentes del valor educativo «tolerancia». Revista española de pedagogía, 223-238.
  • Luque Lozano, A., Molina Bernáldez, Á. M., & Navarro Hidalgo, J. J. (2000). Educar la tolerancia: una propuesta de trabajo. Sevilla: Díada, 2000.
  • Ortega Ruiz, P., Mínguez Vallejos, R. F., & Gil Martínez, R. (1996). La tolerancia en la escuela. Barcelona: Ariel, 1996.
  • Pontara, G. (2016). Gandhi: el político y su pensamiento. Polis. Revista Latinoamericana, (43).

This text is provided for informational purposes only and does not replace consultation with a professional. If in doubt, consult your specialist.