Harold J. Laski: “But men like Mr Scott are rare enough to make reliance upon their emergence a very dubious ground of hope.”

He is able, accordingly, to indulge in the twofold luxury not only of preserving his own authority, but also of assisting the persons attacked to enter, if they so choose, the way of truth.

We grant toleration in one part of the field only to deny it in another.

When attacks on liberty are political or economic, it is their motive rather than their nature that changes.

The intolerance may be Catholic, when it insists that a unity of outlook is essential for the preservation of society; or it may be Protestant when, as with Calvin and the Socinians, it holds that the blasphemous nature of the belief…