Harold J. Laski: “For facts, as William James said, are not born free and equal.”

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

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.

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…