Tony Judt Quotes

Solutions must be based on compromises.

We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it's not just my way or the highway.

Compromise is the key element. The more constraints you have, the more compromise you have to have. But, I personally believe that, when that happens, you have to get more creative, and you end up with something that is even better.

In general ... I tell people not to bang their heads against the wall and to find a compromise.

I think that people have to reward those individuals who are prepared to work across the political aisle. I don't see any other way; if you don't talk to people with whom you disagree, you're never going to solve problems.

Costa Rica believes in building bridges, in looking for solutions to problems, and not clinging to positions.

If you look through history, all of the great work we've done in Congress has been around a table of compromise, when it comes to the most difficult problems.

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.

Compromise is an underrated virtue. The world is awash with dead people because politicians would not compromise.

Compromise, compromise and compromise.

We need a lot more respect in this country for compromise…. There is in compromise a lot of integrity, especially political integrity.

Conflict resolution cannot be merely about eliminating all opposition or reducing the choices in negotiating the problem to two mutually exclusive sets of rights and wrongs. Rather, it must consist of laboring to bring everybody to accept reality and then to project a future with this understanding as the foundation.

Politicians are elected to reach compromise. We compromise all the time in our daily lives. Is there something dirty about that?

There is no fun in getting into a debate or a contest of wills. If something important comes out of the conversation, okay. If not, that's okay, too.

I believe the answers to most problems that confront us around the world can and should be approached by engaging both friend and foe in dialogue. No, I don't naively think that dialogue always works, but I believe we should avoid the rigidity of saying that dialogue never works.

Compromise is part of how we get things done.

I am completely in favour of dialogue and engagement. But it must be a true, open dialogue.

If the auto plants in Detroit would just sit around the table and say, 'What do we gotta do to make this thing work?' Instead of, 'I want this and I want that.' They might make it.

There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.

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.

We had many more points of agreement than we had points of difference, but we did differ, and the bigger we got, the more insistent we got that each one of us should have his way.

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

My job is to come up with something that you like and you agree with that you would play wholeheartedly. If we disagree, I may not be doing my job correctly.

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