Louis Theroux Quotes

The sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually, 'That's right.' Before you convince them to see what you're trying to accomplish, you have to say the things to them that will get them to say, 'That's right.'

What is negotiation but the accumulation of small lies leading to advantage?

Conciliation is not capitulation, nor is compromise to be deemed equivalent to imbalanced concession.

Soft words and hard arguments.

The first rule of negotiations is that normally you have to give to get.

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..

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

There is a thin line between peace of the brave and peace of the hostage... between compromise - even calculated risk - and irresponsibility and capitulation.

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 most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.

The Iranians and Persians are excellent at the art of negotiation.

You can't go to a negotiating table pointing a gun, but you've got to keep it over your shoulder.

The capability of negotiating... is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

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.

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

Reasonable, sensible men can always make a reasonable scheme appear such to other reasonable men.

Yielding is sometimes the best way of succeeding.

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.

Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way.

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.

In peace, as there is more time to spare, the leaders are expected to persuade the rank and file, instead of commanding them.

… the principle of give and take--give one and take ten--the principle of diplomacy.