Jim DeMint Quotes

The main purpose of dialogue is to come to an agreement on how the two parties can work together, realize their mutual interests, and avoid conflict as much as possible

Our mission and task has always been to find a pragmatic balance among competing interests that will serve the greatest common good.

When you let someone else win an argument, often you both end up winners.

I think if you're going to get anything done in the Senate, you have to be on the same sheet of music. If you don't get people on the same sheet of music it comes out pretty horrible.

Compromise, compromise and compromise.

Bipartisanship means you work together to work it out.

By nature, I am a unifier. I am a builder of consensus. I don't believe in sloppy compromise. But I do believe in bringing people together.

You need people that are willing to talk to the other side, or you're never going to get anything done. You need to be willing to expand your ground. There's always usually a place on issues where you can find common ground.

Good governance requires working toward common ground. It isn't easy.

We cannot agree on everything but we must agree on the framework.

Deals really have to do with the overlap of what one side wants and the other side wants, and it's really just the discovery of where that overlap is and how you decide to get there.

Compromise is part of how we get things done.

We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground.

Businesses that run well are almost like marriages. Everything has to be up for discussion, or there will be real problems.

We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.

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

Unless you are willing to compromise, society cannot live together.

I hate the fact that people think 'compromise' is a dirty word.

As a newly married person, as much as I would love for my husband to buy into the 'my way or the highway' philosophy, you realize it's all about compromising and finding some sort of middle ground that everyone can live with.

In politics, you must let the other person have your way.

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

There comes a point, in any kind of, whether it's in your family discussions or business or whatever, where you finally have to get over the making of the points and now let's see if we can find common ground.

You cannot compromise unless people talk to you.

I've learned that in order to achieve what I wanted, it made more sense to negotiate than to defend the autonomy of my work by pounding my fist on the table.

When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day.