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Herbert Spencer

Since the days of persecution, a curious change has taken place in the behavior of so-called orthodoxy towards so-called heterodoxy. The time was when a heretic, forced by torture to recant, satisfied authority by external conformity: apparent agreement sufficed, however profound continued to be the real disagreement. But now that the heretic can no longer be coerced into professing the ordinary belief, his belief is made to appear as much opposed to the ordinary as possible.

Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics (1879), Preface to Part I of The Principles of Ethics “When First Issued Separately.”

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