Keller presents tolerance as a central outcome of education. In the fuller passage, she contrasts the courage required to defend one’s own beliefs with a different form of courage: recognising that others are entitled to hold beliefs of their own. Education, in this view, should develop not only knowledge but also the capacity to understand disagreement without treating it as a threat.

Her reference to religious faith and the “rights of conscience” places tolerance within a wider social context. Keller argues that communities depend on people being able to live alongside differences in belief while preserving what is valuable in competing traditions and viewpoints. The statement therefore treats tolerance as an active civic principle rather than simple indifference. It connects learning with mutual respect, freedom of conscience and the ability to participate constructively in a diverse society.

Full quotation

“The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage—the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.”