An old Chinese political theory

"Early in the Qin dynasty, the man perhaps most responsible for the creation of singular Chinese state, Lord Shang, wrote:"

"To club together and keep your mouth shut is to be good; to be alienated from and spy on each other is to be a scoundrel. If you glorify the good, errors will be hidden; if you put scoundrels in charge, crime will be punished."

Of course the problem is to pick the right kind of scoundrels. We've not always been very good at that; quite a few of them club together and are alienated from everybody else.

It takes a thief to catch a thief?

From RollRollRun, which I found by looking for the source of a quote in another article.