On the record
Most people are prepared to agree with this view when it is made as a general statement; most people, also, recoil from it when its implications are made fully known.
Said by
Harold J. Laski
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gutenberg.orgHarold J. Laski: “Most people are prepared to agree with this view when it is made as a general statement; most people, also, recoil from…”
Editor's note · Context
Laski notes that while many agree with the principle of free expression, they often resist its deeper implications.
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More from Harold J. Laski
We grant it in religion to deny it in politics; we grant it in politics, to deny it in economic matters.
When attacks on liberty are political or economic, it is their motive rather than their nature that changes.
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…
We grant toleration in one part of the field only to deny it in another.
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