David Pratt Quotes

You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.

I would love nothing more than compromise. But I would say to you that compromise that's not a solution is a waste of time.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.

There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.

We experience problem-solving sessions as war zones, we view competing ideas as enemies, and we use problems as weapons to blame and defeat opposition forces. No wonder we can't come up with real lasting solutions!

When you confront a problem you begin to solve it.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.

War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

I just don't believe that you have to come in and insult people when you want to change things.

In the course of my lifetime, that world went from violence to a kind of peace.

But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer.

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.

I think it's very important to get ego out of the room. I think it's important to realize it takes two hands to clap - stop the pointing, stop the blame game. I think we've seen enough of that, I think the country is tired of it. I think they want to see Washington function, they want to see action.

Violent statements and threats cannot provide a solution to the problem. They can only exacerbate feeling and make a clash of forces inevitable.

It is pretty hard to find the right result to a controversial issue.

Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.

Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

The capability of negotiating... is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

The list of problems that we all experience may be endless, but I honestly cannot abide by the rule that, 'He who yells louder is heard.'

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

I don't want to get into the blame game. That's not my job.

I don't know what is to be done. This isn't war.

Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.