Living alongside one another in a spirit of acceptance evokes the concept of tolerance that, from Erasmus da Rotterdam to Voltaire to Primo Mazzolari, calls upon us to understand that the only possible choice for mankind, from time immemorial, has been to educate towards coexistence within milieus that increasingly differ by culture, customs, ways of thinking and behaviours. Beliefs and concepts sometimes refer to values that may also be quite remote from and unlike ours and, as a result, our capacity to find points of contact with other persons becomes the condition, not only for survival, but for growth itself as a human person. To know how to interpret and yet keep one's own points of reference is a constant challenge to our intelligence guided by the will to do good. The concept of free will is based precisely on the strength of the human will, driven to dedicate itself to whatever safeguards, or to turn away from the search for salvation. Freedom cannot exist if we replace it with new absolutisms and mental blocks that hinder the realisation of that growing humanisation plan, founded on responsibility and care. This paper broaches the subject of the relevance of education to tolerance: on one hand, a plan for detecting the limits within us and, on the other, the need for creating a human community, with the purpose of defining a common interest to live for and commit ourselves. So, it is a matter of choosing whether to live through another cold war or shift towards much more promising horizons of encounter and solidarity.