John Hume Quotes

We had an eyeball-to-eyeball agreement at a restaurant before I came back that, if I came back, he would never talk to me that way again or I was simply saying no.

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

I can do whatever I want. They will tell me if what I am doing is stupid or a total waste of time. I may tell them that they are wrong, and we will come to an agreement.

I don’t always agree with my wife, but we discuss the issue with love and respect. And then I say “yes.”

He who cannot agree with his enemies is controlled by them.

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

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

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

If I had a row with my husband, it's not going to work my saying, 'Right, if you don't do what I want, I'm going to walk out.' It doesn't work on any level. What you do is you go in and you say, 'I have a problem. You have a problem. Let's try and sort this out together.' You don't come to an agreement with people who you're falling out with badly.

That most dangerous of opponents: the one who took pains to comprehend the position of his adversary.

I would love nothing more than compromise. But I would say to you that compromise that's not a solution is a waste of time.

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.

We can't always agree on everything.

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 believe that we should come to an agreement with the Palestinians. But we need two to tango.

In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.

I'm used to politics at an international level: people put together an argument and, even if you vehemently disagree with them, well, you can recognise it's an argument and respond.

Two great talkers will not travel far together.

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.

Whenever there's negotiations, there's things that you absolutely love, and there's things that you accept.

I don't fight. I don't believe in it.

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.