A person who recognizes exceptions without abandoning principles becomes difficult to manipulate with extremes.

People who deal in extremes need you to believe there are only two positions: rules are absolute, or rules mean nothing. Someone who can say that a principle holds and that this particular case is different, while giving reasons for both, cannot be pushed into either box. That combination is unglamorous and hard to argue against, which is exactly why it is so hard to manipulate.

When you are being pressed toward an all-or-nothing framing, slow down and state both halves of what you think. Say what you still hold to and what you think is genuinely different here. If the person cannot work with that and keeps forcing the binary, the binary was the point.