Harold J. Laski: “The world gains nothing from a refusal to entertain the possibility that a new idea may be true.”

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…

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.

To deny novelty or grievance a right of expression is a certain, if, indeed, an ultimate, validation of the truth they contain.

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.