Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights.
Erik von Kuehnelt-LeddihnIt is the low drive for sameness and the hatred of otherness that characterizes all forms of leftism, which inevitably are totalitarian.
Erik von Kuehnelt-LeddihnSometime in the coming century, people will rack their brains pondering how nations with tremendous scientific and intellectual achievements could have given uninstructed and untrained men and women the right to vote equally uninstructed and untrained people into responsible positions.
Erik von Kuehnelt-LeddihnOnly a person with convictions has a genuine possibility to be tolerant. He who accepts no absolute values but clings to polite doubt cannot be tolerant but merely indifferent. He is morally defenseless in the face of evil.
Erik von Kuehnelt-LeddihnPeople are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives.
Erik von Kuehnelt-LeddihnAs humanism begins to dominate the state, the consequence is complete hostile annexation of the church or persecution by separation. Religion is then removed from the marketplace and the school, later from other domains of public life. The state will not toerlate any gods besides itself.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn