“The life of the honest man must be an apostasy and a perpetual desertion. The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself continually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors. And the man who wishes to remain faithful to justice must make himself continually unfaithful to inexhaustibly triumphant injustices.”

— Charles Péguy

Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 51

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Charles Péguy 13

French poet, essayist, and editor 1873–1914

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