Achieving Agreement

Sunday, December 15, 2013 – Achieving Agreement

Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions. ~ Lao Tzu

If we are all in agreement on the decision – then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about. ~ Alfred P. Sloan

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. ~ Edmund Burke

Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement. ~ E. B. White

Victor and vanquished never unite in substantial agreement. ~ Tacitus

Our will makes constantly a sort of agreement with the world, whereby, if the world will continually show some respect to the will, the will shall consent to be strenuous in its industry. ~ Josiah Royce

Too much agreement kills a chat. ~ Eldridge Cleaver

Money is not real. It is a conscious agreement on measuring value. ~ John Ralston Saul

My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfied us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please. ~ Frederick II

Compromise: An agreement between two men to do what both agree is wrong. ~ Lord Edward Cecil

Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans. ~ Will Rogers

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them. ~ George W. Bush

I’m sorry, if you were right, I’d agree with you. ~ Robin Williams

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree. ~ Charles Baudelaire

I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don’t agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head. ~ Alan Alda

Do we have to talk in order to agree or agree in order to talk? ~ Jose Bergamin

When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice. ~ Otto von Bismarck

You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it. ~ John Jay Chapman

Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness. ~ Cullen Hightower

You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue – agree with him. ~ Edgar Watson Howe

The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you. ~ Kin Hubbard

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles. ~ Muriel Spark

Nobody agrees with anybody else anyhow, but adults conceal it and infants show it. ~ Ogden Nash

You can always tell when a man is well informed. His views are pretty much like your own. ~ Louie Morris

If you wish to appear agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you know already. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Man, an animal that makes bargains. ~ Adam Smith

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval. ~ Mark Twain

Civilizations grow by agreements and accommodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they’re a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can’t remodel society by day after tomorrow – haven’t the wisdom to and shouldn’t be permitted to – I’d have more respect for them… Civilizations grow and change and decline – they aren’t remade. ~ Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Eleanor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. ~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

You only exist because of the agreements you made with yourself and with the other humans around you. ~ José Luis Ruiz

It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools. ~ E. M. Forster