Harold J. Laski: “The contract is thus not general as with Hobbes but limited and specific in character.”

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.

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

It has been the historic character of persecution always to degrade the persecutor and to strengthen the persecuted by drawing attention to their claims.

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…