Edmund Burke

I may be mistaken, but I take toleration to be a part of religion.

But, for fear of dangerous opinions, you leave it in your power to vex a man who has not held any one dangerous opinion whatsoever.

Let it be considered, that this argument goes as strongly against connivance, which you allow, as against toleration, which you reject.

All these are, however, tolerated under the acts of King William, and subsequent acts; and their diversity of sentiments with one another did not and could not furnish an argument against their toleration, when their difference with…

Then you suffer, or the weakness of your law has suffered, those great dangerous animals to escape notice, whilst you have nets that entangle the poor fluttering silken wings of a tender conscience.

These atheists eluded all that you could do: so will all freethinkers forever.

I will not give heathens the glory of a doctrine which I consider the best part of Christianity.

But was it ever heard that polytheism tolerated a dissent from a polytheistic establishment,--the belief of one God only?

In my opinion, Sir, a magistrate, whenever he goes to put any restraint upon religious freedom, can only do it upon this ground,--that the person dissenting does not dissent from the scruples of ill-informed conscience, but from a party…

But this proceeding of theirs is much beyond the usual allowance to human weakness: it not only is shocking to our reason, but it provokes our indignation.

That power should be puffed up with pride, that authority should degenerate into rigor, if not laudable, is but too natural.

The discussion this day is not between establishment on one hand and toleration on the other, but between those who, being tolerated themselves, refuse toleration to others.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

I do not see why, as long as Providence gives us no further light into this great mystery, we should not leave things as the Divine Wisdom has left them.

You, who are not the predominant power, will not give to others the relaxation under which you are yourself suffered to live.

But I desire that you will not tolerate these men, because they will not go so far as I, though I desire to be tolerated, who will not go as far as you.

When any Dissenters, or any body of people, come here with a petition, it is not the number of people, but the reasonableness of the request, that should weigh with the House.

Very dissonant are a gentle country and cruel laws; very dissonant, that your reason is furious, but your passions moderate, and that you are always equitable except in your courts of justice.

I would, however, have the laws tuned in unison with the manners.

They become the instruments of private malice, private avarice, and not of public regulation; they nourish the worst of men to the prejudice of the best, punishing tender consciences, and rewarding informers.

They put statesmen and magistrates into an habit of playing fast and loose with the laws, straining or relaxing them as may best suit their political purposes,--and in that light tend to corrupt the executive power through all its offices.

I would have no man derive his means of continuing any function, or his being restrained from it, but from the laws only: they should be his only superior and sovereign lords.

Now if they may be roused from their sleep, whenever a minister thinks proper, as instruments of oppression, then they put vast bodies of men into a state of slavery and court dependence; since their liberty of conscience and their power…

Such laws, therefore, as they must be defective either in justice or wisdom or both, so they cannot exist without a considerable degree of danger.

But if the object of the law be no moral or political evil, then you ought not to hold even a terror to those whom you ought certainly not to punish: for if it is not right to hurt, it is neither right nor wise to menace.