Harold J. Laski: “I do not need to remind you that most observers who have sought to estimate the significance of the democratic movement…”

Each age finds that the incidence of freedom is significant at some special point, and there, once more, the lesson of freedom has to be learned.

Each age makes some idol in its own image and sacrifices upon its altar the freedom of those who refuse it worship.

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.

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.