Stephen Bayley Quotes

Solutions must be based on compromises.

A result of accommodation and compromise cannot be supposed perfectly to coincide with any one’s idea of perfection.

Better bow than break.

Compromise, compromise and compromise.

In any negotiation you have a wish list but then you proceed from where you can be.

If you accept the privilege of public service, you had better understand the responsibilities of public service.

In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

I've been very successful in business and I owe it all to politics.

If they think its such a sacrifice to go into public service, then they should stay the heck out.

Bring back that better era of the republic in which, when men consecrated themselves to the public service, they utterly abnegated all selfish purposes.

Join cooperatively with one another, put aside self-interest, and take on service to the public …

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

I'm a compromiser and a maneuverer. I try to get something. That's the way our system works.

I have the ablest staff that ever served any President in my memory. There's not a playboy among them. They aren't sitting around drinking whiskey at 11 o'clock at night. They aren't walking around with their zippers unbuttoned.

A public man should have no resentments.

If we can make the Constitution better in the opinion of those who are opposed to it, without weakening its frame, or abridging its usefulness, in the judgment of those who are attached to it, we act the part of wise and liberal men.

To be a politician must not be a pleasure always.

You don't compromise principles, but you harmonize tactics to preserve unity.

You come here recommended by one of the most respected members of the U. S. Senate, a friend of mine. But other than that fact, I do not know why you should be the head of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention rather than any one of 215 million other Americans, except maybe they are not as old as you.... Why you? What is there about you that qualifies you to head up this department instead of Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith or Mr. Anybody? [Regnery was confirmed.]

The position should not be regarded as permanent to the person. Public service is not the private domain or the private possession of any one person. It is a temporary opportunity for the individual to act for the larger and common good.

The genius of America is in it's ability to make adjustments.

Those who do not serve the public interest should not hold a public license.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense

We are here to serve our citizens and not our ambitions.

We had less qualified trumping more qualified people just because of their political connections.