Portuguese Proverb Quotes

Never cut what you can untie.

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.

Hot heads and cold hearts never solved anything.

You can't just answer everything with the application of force. By the time you have to apply force, there's already been a failure, and you're trying to pull your chestnuts out in the worst possible way

You always have to decide whether an international problem is like a skinned knee or an abscessed tooth. If it’s a skinned knew with a scab and you start messing with the scab you can make it worse. But if you let it alone, it will heal itself. If it is an abscessed tooth, and you leave it alone, it will only fester more and become a bigger problem.

For us, it is alright if the talks succeed, and it is alright if they fail.

War is always an option. Peace is not.

It's important to work through things in a relationship. You can't just give up because you're frustrated. It's most important to talk things through together. And that, for me, has been the way I've best resolved problems in the past.

Peace is produced by war.

We must keep on trying to solve problems, one by one, stage by stage, if not on the basis of confidence and cooperation, at least on that of mutual toleration and self-interest.

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.

The great Chinese classics have always said that it's better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought.

Very few conflicts in the history of the world have been satisfactorily concluded according to a published timetable, because you lose all flexibility in dealing with your opponents.

Appeasement was never a very clever policy, and it should not be our option today.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You're trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren't very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

Fight as hard as you can, and then understand there's going to have to be some amount of reasonable compromise.

Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.

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

You don't kill your way to peace.

I'm a diplomat by nature. I help find the middle ground. I crack a joke and use humour to help resolve potentially vicious situations quickly. It gets things in perspective and helps everyone to see that things aren't as bad as they seem.

The art of politics is to design a solution that feels painless to all.

Negotiations can create conditions that can lead to solutions.

Unless you’re prepared to use force, it’s very difficult to deal with a person who understands only force.