Harold J. Laski: “They will allow freedom in inessentials; but when the pith of freedom is attack upon their monopoly they will define it…”

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 only way to deal with novelty is to understand it, and the only way to deal with grievance is to seek a remedy for the complaint it embodies.

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.