Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
About this quote
- Attributed to
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Source
- Speech in 1935, as quoted by Donna E. Shalala, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, in a speech to the American Public Welfare Association (27 February 1995)
- Culture / tradition
- American
- Attribution status
- ✓ Verified source
- Verification
- Primary reference
Photo: Michal Klajban · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source · Portrait: Leon Perskie (1899–1982) Alternative names Leon Albert Perskie; Leon A. Perskie (CC BY 2.0)
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For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
Tolerance. In all my years of debating politics and religion no mind was changed with derision and no thought convicted by way of harshness. You have no right to demand tolerance while deriding others and their beliefs in the process. Want tolerance? Extend it. You'll be surprised because given it, people will actually listen.