Strategic Negotiation Quotes

President Obama and I disagree on policy with Israel. He seems to say... 'We want peace, but we want to act like Switzerland. We're going to be a neutral party to everyone.' I think that's negotiating from weakness.

Keeping his face clean over Watergate was one of Kissinger's biggest successes; so was his overall handling of the Yom Kippur War.

Negotiation is not a policy. It's a technique. It's something you use when it's to your advantage, and something that you don't use when it's not to your advantage.

I'm willin' for any solution - religious, political. I'm not going to keep offerin' to negotiate so much because they turn us down each time. It indicates a weakness on our part.

You aren't going to be successful as a diplomat if you don't understand the strategic context in which you are actually negotiating. It is not deal making. It's not.

But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail.

You yourself said to Khrushchev?, "You may be ahead of us in rocket thrust, but we're ahead of you in color television. I think that color television is not as important as rocket thrust.

Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962, do you think he would have avoided a nuclear war?

Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning fifty feet off shore, he'd throw you a thirty foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way

I was the principal negotiator for the Department of Defense, when I was secretary of the Navy, on the issue of Toshiba technology concerns with American submarines.

The aim of war now is not to defeat your enemy – that’s probably impossible – but to change the way he and his supporters think.

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting.

Sometimes you need conflict in order to come up with a solution. Through weakness, oftentimes, you can't make the right sort of settlement, so I'm aggressive, but I also get things done, and in the end, everybody likes me.

In several speeches and interviews, Donald Trump has brought up his book 'The Art of the Deal,' and said that Obama would have negotiated a better deal with Iran if he had read it. It got even more awkward for Obama when Iran was like, 'It worked for us - you guys got screwed!'

The one thing that I remember from all of my intelligence briefings and my dealings with the Russians is that when you deal with the Russians, you have to deal with them from strength, not from weakness.

The number one goal in resolving a conflict is to make sure both sides maintain their self-esteem. You don't hit a man on the head when you've got your fingers between his teeth.

Diplomacy and force are two sides of the same coin.

You are here to step into the shoes of UN ambassadors - to draft resolutions, to plot strategy, to negotiate with your allies as well as your adversaries. Your goal may be to resolve a conflict, to cope with a natural disaster or to bring nations together on an issue like climate change. You may be playing a role, but you are also preparing for life. You are acting as global citizens.

There are always those who would put on armour and go into battle. but the real genius is in finding a way to get what you desire without dying for it.

When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.

We would continue our commitments, president and cabinet, to the manner of negotiations as a strategic and political reality, through which we would pick up the fruits of our struggle and our people's sacrifice.

I thought I was going to grow up and become a diplomat and negotiate nuclear arms.

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

There was no pressure or blackmail from the U.S. I had no idea the military aid was held up.

If people know you'll go to any lengths for your client, they're less likely to play games with you.