Olympia Snowe Quotes

Democracy involves that old-fashioned thing called working it out.

If you look through history, all of the great work we've done in Congress has been around a table of compromise, when it comes to the most difficult problems.

I think that people have to reward those individuals who are prepared to work across the political aisle. I don't see any other way; if you don't talk to people with whom you disagree, you're never going to solve problems.

When you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate.

Majority rule is not the norm for solving issues or problems.

If we can’t agree on the facts, how can we agree on the solutions?

The main aim of the [political] dialogue should be to resolve the problems of the nation, not to find who is the winner and who is the loser. That's not what it's all about. It's to try and find an answer that is acceptable to all parties concerned, which would of course require some give and take.

Nebraskans have very strong opinions, but we sit down around a table and we solve our problems.

Consensus building doesn't necessarily fit with my experience.

Consensus isn't just about agreement. It's about changing things around: You get a proposal, you work something out, people foresee problems, you do creative synthesis. At the end of it, you come up with something that everyone thinks is okay. Most people like it, and nobody hates it.

We Liberal Democrats believe in dialogue. We believe in cooperation with both sides of industry and between both sides of industry. And we believe in the language of cooperation. We reject the language of confrontation.

I think we can work through a lot of these issues.

I sure tried to help deliver compromise, consensus, bipartisanship.

Costa Rica believes in building bridges, in looking for solutions to problems, and not clinging to positions.

You cannot compromise unless people talk to you.

I believe any time that both parties are talking, it's a good thing.

Our position is that we can sit down and talk to try to solve our problems through dialogue.

Negotiations can create conditions that can lead to solutions.

We have differences. That’s why we’re here. That’s what Congress does.

In government, consensus is more important than command; persuasion not only works better than arrogance, it's vital to the democratic process.

Democracy is that fine art of compromise.

The two parties should be turning to each other rather than on each other.

Conflict resolution cannot be merely about eliminating all opposition or reducing the choices in negotiating the problem to two mutually exclusive sets of rights and wrongs. Rather, it must consist of laboring to bring everybody to accept reality and then to project a future with this understanding as the foundation.

Consensus is the essence of the legislative process.

You don't promote the cause of peace by talking only to people with whom you agree.