Harold J. Laski: “History shows that it is just as likely as anyone else to abuse an unlimited authority.”

The essence of the persecuting position is always that the persecutor has hold of truth and that he would betray its service by allowing it to be questioned.

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.

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.