"Tolerance is the last virtue of a declining society" --Aristotle
UPDATE: See discussion in combox; apparently this is a fabricated quotation.
UPDATE II: To begin with, "tolerance" is not a virtue.
HT: Breitbart
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Do you have a citation to where this statement is in Aristotle's works? The index entries for tolerance and toleration in my copy do not cite anything close.
nope.
That doesn't sound like Aristotle to me. He wouldn't use the word "virtue" to describe a trait that leads reliably to destruction, which is what the quote suggests. A virtue is defined by the fact that it is generally the best course in life (see the first pages of the Nicomachean Ethics).
What he does say that is relevant is in Politics Book V:
"Another cause of revolution is a difference in peoples which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a state is not a growth of a day, any more than it grows out of a multitude brought together by accident. Hence the reception of strangers in colonies, either at the time of their foundation or afterwards, has generally produced revolution[.]" (1303a25ff, if you have a copy with the line numbers).
Thx, Grim!
Chesterton: "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions."
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