turnabout is fair play

Proverb

turnabout is fair play

1. It is allowable to retaliate against an enemy's dirty tricks by using the same ones against them.
   • My Endeavours were used to perplex their Thoughts and Judgments; I told them, that at next Wednesday’s Dinner I hoped we would be informed who were to rule the Roast, that hitherto honest Men were kept from shuffling the Cards, because they would cast Knaves out from the Company of Kings, but we...1755, Dudley Bradstreet, The Life and Uncommon Adventures of Captain Dudley Bradstreet, S. Powell, Dublin, p. 216
   • No, I won't, — I went to my bed last, — let my bed come to me now, turn about is fair play.1795, Archibald MacLaren, The Scottish Volunteers, page 23
2. Taking turns is morally right.
   • A good way to get started on a little sexual assertiveness training is to agree to take turns being “dominant.” One evening the man takes ... Well, turnabout is fair play, and it's time for the woman to do the work, to try to please her man. . . and to take pleasure from him in any way she can.1996, Doctor James White, Peter Kent, The Best Sex of Your Life, page 214
   • For both mayor parties rotation in office came to embrace the doctrine of taking turns in the distribution of prizes. More than once in his quest for the Whig nomination to Congress Lincoln employed the slogan, “turnabout is fair play." By fair play he referred not to the Youngian antipower notions...1998, Hugh Douglas Price, Nelson W. Polsby, Explorations in the Evolution of Congress, page 92