Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Via Survival

"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subject to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher.

For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the ends justify the means would bring terrible retribution."