Harold J. Laski: “It must demand that changes in its organization be the outcome of peaceful persuasion and not the consequence of violent…”

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.

Ultimately, that denial is always made upon the same ground: it is insisted that the doctrines or practices attacked are subversive of the civil order.

It has been the historic character of persecution always to degrade the persecutor and to strengthen the persecuted by drawing attention to their claims.

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…