Benjamin Franklin Quotes

With Bill Clinton, there were things I had to have and things I couldn't have. Clinton had things he had to have and things he couldn't have. And there was space in the middle where you could have a deal.

International negotiation has a nasty tendency to remind its practitioners that the laws of gravity affect them, too, and that international life is a two-way street in which one may have to give in order to get.

A pragmatic sense of what will and will not play politically is a critical skill of a negotiator.

Anyone who has ever negotiated an agreement knows that in order to get it, you have to be willing to walk away from the table..

That’s the trick in any negotiation. Getting to yes means getting the other party satisfied that its interest are being met sufficiently…. You both got to get something out of it that your prepared to fight for at home.

I don't think that strategically it is smart to begin cutting your options when the other side does not move at all.

I will go anywhere, anytime, to meet with anyone to find common ground.

Part of diplomacy, the hard work of diplomacy is trying to extract whatever concessions you can get, and giving something the other side wants. Of course you've got to try to make peace with, and work with those who are your adversaries, but you don't just rush in, open the door, and say, "Here I am. Let's talk and make a deal."

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

To get people to compromise, you have to give them stuff.

[Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is an adherent of realpolitik. He knows that international relations are not built on the strength of unilateral demands, but on solutions that are in everybody's best interest.

Create the impression of endless willingness to compromise and you almost invite deadlines. That's the challenge we now have in North Korea and have had in North Korea for 10 years. In this sense, diplomacy and foreign policy and other elements of political activity have to be closely linked and have to be understood by the negotiators

Half of this business is politics. As real estate developers, it's our job to go in there and get beat up.

You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate.

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

Number one, that it is smart to communicate and negotiate with your enemy instead of just waging war with bombs and weapons of mass destruction.

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

That's what happens in the world. You get offered superior contracts.

Campaigns often make standing on principle the highest of virtues - and listening to your opponents a sure sign of weakness. It's the virtual opposite of what it takes to succeed in office. Squaring the circle takes a powerful combination of skills. But presidents who can campaign and compromise are generally the most successful.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

Sometimes you need conflict in order to come up with a solution. Through weakness, oftentimes, you can't make the right sort of settlement, so I'm aggressive, but I also get things done, and in the end, everybody likes me.

We're all negotiators.

So much of life is a negotiation - so even if you're not in business, you have opportunities to practice all around you.

How could you justify giving Holland twice the amount of money that you gave Belgium? Well, finally, I put it up to them. They said that they couldn't do it; it would destroy them. I said they had to do it. And I finally got support from Hoffman on it.