Richard Dawkins Quotes

I wanted to be a hostage negotiator.

In my years as the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator, I learned an important fundamental lesson: Hostage negotiation is often nothing more than a business transaction.

You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate.

That's what happens in the world. You get offered superior contracts.

I had some training on how to cope with hostage-taking.

The most difficult thing in any negotiation, almost, is making sure that you strip it of the emotion and deal with the facts. And there was a considerable challenge to that here and understandably so.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

In any negotiation, my goal is to be the most unreasonable person in the room.

The approach of danger always lends precision to the diplomatic art.

Issuing an ultimatum is not negotiation.

We always find that taking a fairly hard-line position means our membership gets the best deal possible.

International negotiation has a nasty tendency to remind its practitioners that the laws of gravity affect them, too, and that international life is a two-way street in which one may have to give in order to get.

You can never in negotiations be totally predictable. The minute you’re predictable, they’re going to figure out how to take advantage.

Success of negotiations cannot be guaranteed. If there is no attempt, then failure is guaranteed.

Unilateralism in secret is sometimes necessary at the height of a crisis.

A pragmatic sense of what will and will not play politically is a critical skill of a negotiator.

Anyone who has ever negotiated an agreement knows that in order to get it, you have to be willing to walk away from the table..

That’s the trick in any negotiation. Getting to yes means getting the other party satisfied that its interest are being met sufficiently…. You both got to get something out of it that your prepared to fight for at home.

When you negotiate a deal, you clearly know a lot about the other person.

I don't think that strategically it is smart to begin cutting your options when the other side does not move at all.

Practice negotiating, and hone your style and skills with low-consequence transactions. Call the phone company and threaten to switch providers if they won't give you a better deal on your service going forward. Go to a boutique and ask for a discount.

To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation... If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you're 30 percent ahead.

I was quite intrigued by the idea of following the exploits of people who are often in the margins. You see the negotiators, but it's usually the SWAT team or the tactical team that draw our eye.

You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.