Quotes About Negotiation

We were eyeball-to-eyeball and the other fellow just blinked.

The government has verbal diarrhea- if there's a war, they'll end up talking the enemy to death.

Now do you see why war irritates me? It's always the same. A lot of people get killed, but in the end, the whole thing is settled at the conference table. The notion of having the conference first doesn't seem to occur to people.

Organizing a marriage is like forming a government after a war.

think one of the big lessons is that we should do more talking and less fighting.

Swapping one thing directly for another while trying to get the best deal one can out of the transaction is, ordinarily, how one deals with people one doesn't care about and doesn't expect to see again. What reason is there not to try to take advantage of such a person?

Il suffisait parfois d'un petit marchandage de rien du tout pour venir à bout des grandes choses - le temps, le destin, Dieu…

the thirty-eighth parallel, selected by the Americans and the Russians back in 1945 as the dividing line between the two Koreas, as a border at all.

Thus if instead of saying, that in war the weaker have always recourse to negotiation, we should say, that they have always recourse to conquest, the custom, which we have acquired of attributing certain relations to ideas, still follows the words, and makes us immediately perceive the absurdity of that proposition; in the same manner as one particular idea may serve us in reasoning concerning other ideas, however different from it in several circumstances.

how much he admired the pope's ability to craft his speeches in a way that ensured they would offend no one.

This isn't combat. It's diplomacy." "Diplomacy with guns is combat.

This isn't a negotiation, it's not even a conversation. I'm just setting out the terms, that's all.

We inadvertently bombed the Chinese Embassy. But Clinton now is working very hard. He has sent a letter of apology to the Chinese. And, he's also given them a gift certificate for future nuclear secrets.

I was at the point of disarming my slaves and driving them away, when they relented, and professed to be willing to go anywhere; so, being eager to finish my geographical work, I said I would run the risk of their desertion, and gave beads to buy provisions for a start north. I

Lieut. Cameron gave the men to understand that it was agreed Lieut. Murphy should return to Zanzibar, and asked if they could attach his party to their march; if so, the men who acted as carriers should receive 6 dollars a man for their services. This was agreed to. Susi had arranged that they should avoid the main path of the Wagogo; inasmuch, as if difficulty was to be encountered anywhere, it would arise amongst these lawless pugnacious people.

You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.

Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.

In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.

There are two basic rules which should never be broken. Be subtle. And don't, for God's sake, try to do business with anyone who's having a bad game.

oh my god, she said are you going to be reasonable about this?

I have only been seeking to get them to the negotiating table and, thank God, that's where they are.

Good wishes alone will not ensure peace.

You learn, just as you learn good manners, how to approach things with a certain amount of diplomacy.