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About this quote

What does it mean?
Admitting faults openly weakens authority and creates opportunities for further action.
In plain terms
Confessing mistakes can undermine those in power and give you leverage.
What can you take from it?
Use honesty strategically to shift power dynamics.

Where it applies

  • workplace negotiations
  • activism

Putting it to work

  • publicly own errors
  • expose contradictions

Questions to consider

  • When does honesty become a tactic?
  • How does authority respond to vulnerability?

Another view

Repeated admissions may damage credibility.

More from Samuel Langhorne Clemens

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  2. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

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  3. A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

    Permalink to quote #59

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