Harold J. Laski: “Habit, in fact, without philosophy destroys the finer side of civilized life.”

In a time of crisis, particularly, when the things we hold most dear are threatened, we shall find the desire to throw overboard the habits of tolerance, almost irresistible.

But we cannot understand the eighteenth century, or its theories, unless we realize that its temper was still dominantly aristocratic.

That some sort of toleration was inevitable few, save a group of prejudiced irreconcilables, would have denied.

We do not build Utopias; and the attempt to discover the eternal principles of political right invites disaster at the outset.