Reciprocal Concessions

Sunday, July 10, 2011 – Reciprocal Concessions

I’m a compromiser and a maneuverer. I try to get something. That’s the way our system works. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. ~ Edmund Burke

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship. ~ James Russell Lowell

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf. ~ G. K. Chesterton

Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz, 1932

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece. ~ Ludwig Erhard

Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due. ~ Ambrose Bierce

A lean compromise is better than a fat lawsuit. ~ George Herbert

A man’s wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart. ~ George Jean Nathan

A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practice perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

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

I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle. ~ Andrew Carnegie

If we don’t stop somewhere, if we don’t accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don’t learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice – if we don’t learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state. ~ Amos Oz

It’s true Heaven forbids some pleasures, but a compromise can usually be found. ~ Moliere

Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

Sometimes a little compromise isn’t a bad thing. You don’t need to be precious about it. ~ David Sylvian

The compromise will always be more expensive than either of the suggestions it is compromising. ~ Arthur Bloch

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody? ~ Princess Diana

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing. ~ Samuel Butler

We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can’t agree on when it’s necessary to compromise. ~ Larry Wall

You know what the Englishman’s idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements. ~ William Butler Yeats

The English never draw a line without blurring it. ~ Winston Churchill

What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease. ~ Bliss Carman

Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise – that which is common to you, me and everybody. ~ Thomas Ernest Hulme

Leaders shouldn’t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can’t compromise. ~ Peter F. Drucker

If you are not very clever, you should be conciliatory. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy. ~ Chinua Achebe

Compromise is never anything but an ignoble truce between the duty of a man and the terror of a coward. ~ G. K. Chesterton

People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions. ~ Samuel Johnson

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible – but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity. ~ Bertrand Russell