Theo Epstein Quotes

When you make something you are always offering some choices and denying others.

I believe that creativity comes from compromise. If you could have everything you ever wanted, it doesn't always work.

The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.

It's a hard job. It means giving up some things, but on the other hand they keep saying you can have it all. You can't really have it all so easy. You can do a little of this and little of that.

Because every design must satisfy competing objectives, there necessarily has to be compromise among, if not the complete exclusion of, some of those objectives, in order to meet what are considered the more important of them.

Choice is a form of compromise, no? So why choose if you can have both?

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.

Not that I believe you can have it all: I believe you can have it all, just not at the same time.

It's impossible for someone who is human to have all good things together, just as there is no single country able to provide all good things for itself.

You know, we always tried to rationalize by saying you take the good, you take the upside, you got to deal with the downside, you've to take the downside.

Flexibility has become a modern day value that everyone wants. But flexibility comes with a cost.

In all human affairs one notices, if one examines them closely, that it is impossible to remove one inconvenience without another emerging.

No society ... can fail in time to explode if it is deprived of the arts of compromise .... No good society can be unprincipled and no viable society can be principle-ridden.

We must do as we may when we may not do as we would.

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

I stick by my principles, and one of my principles is flexibility.

I've never believed in seeking perfection at the risk of losing everything.

I've always said if I'm winning at one thing, I'm failing at another.

You can have it all, but not all at once.

I don't want the bottom, so I have to sacrifice the top.

I think that anything in life is about the middle ground.

Life is about compromise - in relationships and at work.

You can't put as much into one thing as you want, and I felt like I was shortchanging football a little bit by giving school so much time.

I don't believe you can absolutely have it all.

Our ape legs make us great generalists - we can walk, run and climb. But when you try to do too many things at once, you can end up with problems.