Concession Quotes

He who is strong, concedes.

You have so often been right that it is perfectly possible that I am wrong…

A fair bargain leaves both sides unhappy.

To bargain freedom for security is the devil's bargain. Having made the bargain, one enjoys neither freedom nor security.

Give way to your opponent; thus will you gain the crown of victory.

Whatever you compromise to gain, you will lose.

Sometimes you have to take a draw.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

My wife's trying to get me into yoga, and it's gonna take me a while, but eventually I'm gonna have to.

All legislation is founded upon the principle of mutual concession.

With negotiations, you never know what's going to happen.

A bloody battle leaves even the victor bloodied. But compromise also has its costs—particularly when it alienates the majority and is taken as a sign of weakness.

Talking and diplomacy is often seen as a concession in America, in a way that it is not in other places.

My people were divided about surrendering.

If you have a coalition, you must have a little give.

Diplomacy is letting someone else have your way.

It is fitting for a great nation to yield.

He [Theodore Roosevelt] acted upon the maxim that half a loaf is better than no bread. I believe that half a loaf is fatal whenever it is accepted at the sacrifice of the basic principle sought to be attained.... A half-way measure never fairly tests the principle and many utterly discredit it.

We want to give them more than a choice between capitulation and strangulation.

It is a mere truism to say that, in politics, there has to be one continual compromise. Of course now and then questions arise upon which a compromise is inadmissible. There could be no compromise with secession, and there was none. There should be no avoidable compromise about any great moral question. But only a very few great reforms or great measures of any kind can be carried through without concession. No student of American history needs to be reminded that the Constitution itself is a bundle of compromises, and was adopted only because of this fact, and that the same thing is true of the Emancipation Proclamation.

No great reform can be achieved except at the sacrifice of some opinion.

I purposely lost a fight to Billy Fox because they promised me that I would get a shot to fight for the title if I did.

In politics, there is no such thing as getting something for nothing. The payoff may involve compromises of various types that strike at the ideals and principles one has held deal all his life.

The first rule of negotiations is that normally you have to give to get.

I am willing ... when I cannot get all I wish, to take what I can get.