Henry David Thoreau

I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-​stock of the world.

Henry David Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts,” July 4, 1854.