Harold J. Laski: “We must not assume an a priori justification for the forces of the past.”

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

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

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.

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…