“The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“The best known evil is the most tolerable.”
— Livy
Book XXIII, sec. 3
History of Rome
Variant: Those ills are easiest to bear with which we are most familiar.
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Livy70
Roman historian -59–17 BCRelated quotes
“General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)
Diary (15 May 1878)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.
“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”
Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6, section, A Good Soldier as translated by Woods (1996), p. 506
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt
Remarks by el-Sisi during celebrating the night of El-Kadr on 25 July 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6d_ln9MQHk. <br class="br">2014
“Books are the most tolerant of friends.”
Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India
The Unity of India : Collected Writings, 1937-1940 (1942), p. 280
Context: Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today.
Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system. And because we have tolerated our past and present evils, international affairs are poisoned and law and justice have disappeared from them.
Moses I. Finley (1912–1986) American historian
Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 3
“Families are the best place to learn and practice mutual tolerance and acceptance.”
Begum Aga Khan (1963) German philanthropist
Interview with FOCUS Magazine, July 2005 http://www.princessinaara.org/news/Focus-07-2005.pdf
“Fire is the most tolerable third party.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
January 2, 1853
Journals (1838-1859)