“It is my duty to speak up; I will not be an accessory to the fact. If I were, my nights would be haunted by the spectre of that innocent man so far away, suffering the worst kind of torture as he pays for a crime he did not commit.”
—Emile Zola, The Dreyfus Affair: ‘J’accuse’ & Other Writings
“… I was the most fervent, and possibly the first, of the Dreyfusards.”
–Marcel Proust, Selected Letters, v. 4
“[T]here exists a certain criterion by which we may know whether the ‘clerk’ who takes public action does so in conformity with his true functions; and that is, that he is immediately reviled by the laymen, whose interests he thwarts (Socrates, Jesus). We may say beforehand that the ‘clerk’ who is praised by the laymen is a traitor to his office.”
—Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals
