Preface, The Sacredness Of Criticism
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)
Context: The last word remains with Christ and Handel; and this must stand as the best defence of Tolerance until a better man than I makes a better job of it.
Put shortly and undramatically the case is that a civilization cannot progress without criticism, and must therefore, to save itself from stagnation and putrefaction, declare impunity for criticism. This means impunity not only for propositions which, however novel, seem interesting, statesmanlike, and respectable, but for propositions that shock the uncritical as obscene, seditious, blasphemous, heretical, and revolutionary.
“… generally speaking, Muslim tolerance of unbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom, until the rise of secularism in the 17th century.”
Source: Books, Islam: The Religion and the People (2008), p. 146.
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Bernard Lewis 33
British-American historian 1916–2018Related quotes
“It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing.”
Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 188
“Mede spoke with amused tolerance, as physicists generally speak of biologists.”
“The Masters” p. 46 (originally published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, February 1963)
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)
Source: The Dramatic Universe: Man and his nature (1966), p. 7
Letter to Lord Minto (19 September 1907), quoted in D. A. Hamer, Lord Morley: Liberal Intellectual in Politics (1968), p. 56
1900s
Journal entry (July 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)
Source: The Age of Revolution (1962), Chapter 12, Ideology: Religion
Rao (1996) "Significance of Secularism: Atheism is a Way of Live." The Atheist, Vol 28-29 p. 43
Context: Positive secularism is not tolerance of all religions, but it is the total denial of religious beliefs: it is the emergence of homogeneous human outlook which is based upon verifiable facts of life.