Roy Reed Quotes

When you are President you have to get something done, and that often means compromise.

The government was built on compromising. And it's frustrating as hell.

The art of government is the art of negotiating and compromise.

Legislation is the art of compromise.

Politicians are elected to reach compromise. We compromise all the time in our daily lives. Is there something dirty about that?

Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues.

The art of politics is to design a solution that feels painless to all.

The dominant color of politics is gray; difficult choices and compromise are required at almost every step of the journey toward a major new program.

He had no gifts for the compromises with human frailty which alone can grease the wheels of politics.

All legislation of any consequence is a compromise. You have to recognize that.

Nearly all legislation is the result of compromise.

Compromises may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.

Strong men know when to compromise.

If politics is an art, it is not like sculpture or painting, where one side acts and the other is passive material. It is more like drama without a script, or dance without choreography - in other words, improvisation.

[Ideological] Purity is fine but it doesn’t win elections and is not a governing strategy. Compromise is required.

It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble.

We have to find compromises. That's the way it is in Norway.

Politics is compromise.

As I climbed the electoral ladder - from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey - political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them.

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.

I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.

Americans tend to go for it all. In international politics you can’t have it all. You have to compromise.

Bipartisanship is “the oil of national government.”

It’s going to take some give and take from the House Judiciary Chairman who doesn’t like to give and only likes to take.

Practical politics, being commonly an affair of compromise and relative truth,—a human attempt to modify the severity of Nature's processes …