It must tolerate the expression of experience it hates because it is there, as a state, to satisfy even the experience it cannot understand.
Harold J. Laski: “It must tolerate the expression of experience it hates because it is there, as a state, to satisfy even the experience…”
Editor's note · Context
This quote emphasizes the importance of tolerating diverse experiences, even those that challenge the state.
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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.
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…
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.
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.





