Quotes About Compromise

The clash was unsatisfactory to everybody. Therefore, the pragmatist claimed, we must reach a livable compromise. This approach puts the pragmatist on the side of the aggressor, though they don't advocate aggression. As a criticism of pragmatism, you can say that it is totally amoral, and every amoral system is on the side of the immoral. But the pragmatist is impersonal about force. Someone wants to bash your skull in, reach a livable compromise: tell him to break one leg. [NFW 69]

The basic pattern in conflictual marriages is one in which neither gives in to the other or in which neither is capable of an adaptive role.... The relationship cycles through periods of intense closeness, conflict that provides a period of emotional distance, and making up, which starts another cycle of intense closeness.

What had Pledger-Brown said? Too bad, Davey; he wanted blood and all we could offer was guts.

At the very least, if you and the other side cannot reach first-order agreement, you can usually reach second-order agreement—that is, agree on where you disagree, so that you both know the issues in dispute, which are not always obvious.

To get what we want, we are compelled to negotiate.

Negotiations are not likely to make much progress as long as one side believes that the fulfillment of their basic human needs is being threatened by the other.

Agreement is often based on disagreement. It is as absurd to think, for example, that you should always begin by reaching agreement on the facts as it is for a buyer of stock to try to convince the seller that the stock is likely to go up. If they did agree that the stock would go up, the seller would probably not sell. What makes a deal likely is that the buyer believes the price will go up and the seller believes it will go down.

Be hard on the problem, soft on the people.

It is easy to forget sometimes that a negotiation is not a debate. Nor is it a trial.

Sidestep their attack and deflect it against the problem.

Recast an attack on you as an attack on the problem.

what is the best advice one could give a husband and wife getting divorced who want to know how to reach a fair and mutually satisfactory agreement without ending up in a bitter fight?

The soft negotiating game emphasizes the importance of building and maintaining a relationship.

Even apart from a shared interest in averting joint loss, there almost always exists the possibility of joint gain. This may take the form of developing a mutually advantageous relationship, or of satisfying the interests of each side with a creative solution.

Toleration means being prepared to accept opinions that you intensely dislike. Likewise democracy means consenting to be governed by people whom you intensely dislike. This

This is possible only if we retain our trust in negotiation and in the sincere desire, among politicians, to compromise with their opponents. Hence in both Britain and America it is necessary for conservatives to defend the politics of compromise, and to protect all those institutions and customs that give a voice to opposition. This

Unless and until people identify themselves with the country, its territory and its cultural inheritance – in something like the way people identify themselves with a family – the politics of compromise will not emerge.

Unless and until people identify themselves with the country, its territory and its cultural inheritance – in something like the way people identify themselves with a family – the politics of compromise will not emerge. We

Personal feelings don't make for good politics, legal decisions, or business deals.

It is unclear how closely Grant followed current affairs as the national debate over slavery broadened and intensified. Through the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state while other territories wrested from Mexico were left free to adopt slavery or not. In exchange, the North appeased the South by submitting to a strict new fugitive slave law that made many northerners feel like accomplices in the hated institution of their southern brethren.

Rather than make peace with John Adams, he was ready, if necessary, to blow up the Federalist party and let Jefferson become president.

They knew they would either have to quit the business or swallow their pride and make peace with the oil giant.

April 12, 1790, the House voted down Hamilton's assumption plan, thirty-one to twenty-nine, and two weeks later voted to discontinue all debate on the issue. By early June, it looked as if the assumption plan was heading for oblivion. So Hamilton began to search for a compromise that would salvage the linchpin of his economic program.

Throughout his career, he operated in the realm of the possible, taking the world as it was, not as he wished it to be, and he often inveighed against a dogmatic insistence upon perfection.