Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.
Interpretation
Tolerance is an ongoing journey that requires constant effort and commitment.
This quote by Octavia Butler emphasizes that tolerance is not a fixed state but an evolving practice that requires continuous attention and growth. It suggests that true intelligence involves recognizing the complexities of peace and actively working towards greater acceptance and understanding among people.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of diversity in communities.
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.
I wanted Yoda to be the traditional kind of character you find in fairy tales and mythology. And that character is usually a frog or a wizened old man on the side of the road. The hero is going down the road and meets this poor and insignificant person. The goal or lesson is for the hero to learn to respect everybody and to pay attention to the poorest person because that's where the key to his success will be.
Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue.
Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect.
What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.
There is no slavery but ignorance.
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