“The traveler reflected: It is always questionable to intervene decisively in foreign circumstances. He was neither a citizen of the penal colony, nor a citizen of the state to which it belonged. If he condemned this execution, or even wanted to deceive it, one could say to him: You are a stranger, be quiet. To this he would have nothing to reply, but could only add that in this case he did not understand himself, for he was traveling only with the intention of seeing and by no means to change foreign judicial constitutions.”
— Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony