Bad men have sometimes been the instruments of noble destiny; and there are few more curious episodes in English history than the result of this alliance between revengeful hate and insolent ambition.
Laski reflects on the paradox of how negative traits in individuals can lead to significant historical outcomes, particularly in English history.
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The only way to deal with novelty is to understand it, and the only way to deal with grievance is to seek a remedy for the complaint it embodies.
When attacks on liberty are political or economic, it is their motive rather than their nature that changes.
The essence of the persecuting position is always that the persecutor has hold of truth and that he would betray its service by allowing it to be questioned.
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…
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