Slippery slope

The metaphor of a "slippery slope" conjures up images of the danger of coming too close to the edge of a cliff. One step in itself may not cause you any harm, as it merely brings you down the slope a bit. But if you take enough steps toward the brink, you will reach a point where the slippery ground makes you lose your balance and tumble down over the precipice.

In rhetoric, a "slippery slope argument" is one which suggests that an innocent-seeming small action will lead inevitably to a disasterous result.

Examples:

• If we allow this increase in administrative fees, soon tuition will double!
• If we don't stop the terrorists in Iraq, they'll invade Maine next!
• If we send in 100,000 troops, the next thing you know we'll be in a quagmire like Vietnam!
• If we let gays get married, soon men will want to marry their kitchen appliances!

This sort of argument is generally recognized as a logical fallacy.

Quotations illustrating use

Literal

Even when I was on this mare, she would poise herself on the top of a block of granite, with her four feet close together in the manner of a goat and she leaped across crevasses of unknown depth after having to go down a slippery slope on one side, and when, on the other, she had nothing to jump upon except steeply-inclined blocks of stone.—"Himalayan Ponies," The New York Times, March 14, 1875, p. 4

They stood, who saw the future come

On through the fight’s delirium!

They smote and stood, who held the hope

Of nations on that slippery slope

Amid the cheers of Christendom.

Will Henry Thompson (1888), "The High Tide at Gettyburg"

Metaphorical

The cry for the rates in addition to the taxes has been going up from the clerical for years. But they were warned by the late Archbishop of Canterbury not to attempt it, for as surely as they succeeded they would lose their control of their sectarian schools. They would be on the "slippery slope," he said, in a characteristic phrase. However, they have taken the plunge, and the Education Acts of 1902 and 1903 are the results.—John Clifford, 1905<ref>"Clifford, John (190-) ("The Rev. John Clifford, D.D."), "Passive Resistance in England and Wales." The North American Review, 1905, p. 436

—John Clifford, <ref>

See also

• Non Causa Pro Causa