Harold J. Laski: “The argument, at bottom, is common to all thinkers over-impressed by the sanctity of past experience.”

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…

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.

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.

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