"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law."
— Henry David Thoreau
If The Machine Of Government Is
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
About this quote
From "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849), Thoreau's foundational essay on civil disobedience, written after he was jailed overnight in July 1846 for refusing to pay his poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican-American War. This line marks the outermost boundary of Thoreau's argument: not merely that unjust laws deserve no respect, but that when the state conscripts you as an agent of injustice toward another person, breaking the law becomes a moral obligation. The essay profoundly influenced Mahatma Gandhi, who cited it as the closest English equivalent to his concept of Satyagraha, and later Martin Luther King Jr..
Source
Civil Disobedience