Harold J. Laski: “Upon what grounds can we infer prospective gain from persecution of opinion?”

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

We grant it in religion to deny it in politics; we grant it in politics, to deny it in economic matters.

To deny novelty or grievance a right of expression is a certain, if, indeed, an ultimate, validation of the truth they contain.

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…