Kofi Annan Quotes

There is a magic formula for resolving conflicts. It is this: Have as your objective the resolving of the conflict, not the gaining of advantage. There is a magic formula for avoiding conflicts. It is this: Be concerned that you do not offend, not that you are not offended.

What Tully said of war may be applied to disputing: "It should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace." But generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,--their whole delight is in the pursuit; and the disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.

Judith took a deep breath. "Aye, you captured Iain's wife," she said again. "But he married your daughter.

There are always those who would put on armour and go into battle. but the real genius is in finding a way to get what you desire without dying for it.

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

Number one, that it is smart to communicate and negotiate with your enemy instead of just waging war with bombs and weapons of mass destruction.

Violence is absolutely not our method.

We don't point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations.

I try to avoid conflict. I don't want people to be unhappy.

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.

There were times that I needed to go to battle, but how I went to battle wasn't always the best way in.

You have to listen to adversaries and keep looking for that point beyond which it's against their interests to keep on disagreeing or fighting.

Clean fighting solves everything. It ends all bad blood and any ill feelings people have. That's my thoughts.

I was one of the first people in the Palestinian world, in the late 1970s, to say that there is no military option, either for us or for them, and I'm certainly the only well-known Arab who writes these things - and who writes exactly the same things in the Arab press that I say here.

My upbringing did not create a healthy affection for confrontation. I'd love it if everyone always got along, and nothing ever got tense.

At all events, arbitration is more rational, just, and humane than the resort to the sword.

Soft words and hard arguments.

There is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument—and that is to avoid it.

In this age there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war. We must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint.

There is no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended. Conflicts are started by human beings, sustained by human beings, and they can be ended by human beings.

Give the other person the ability to save face…. Don’t rub his nose in things.

You don't have to use aggression to squash somebody. You have to use your brain.

My goal is to be the tough negotiator but... not to air differences through press releases.

When you expect to get into a negotiation, you expect to be faced by a guy that's going to attack you, a guy or gal that's going to attack or that they're going to try to get the best of you. Two-thirds of us, that makes us very defensive.

I'm a calm-headed fighter. I do my job.