Leon Trotsky Quotes

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

As to such of them as you cannot prevail with to concur you are to endeavor at least to soften them in their opposition or to get them to be absent.

Force should never be the first answer, but sometimes it is the only answer.

They should not be knocked down with a bludgeon. They should have their threats cut with a feather.

Half of this business is politics. As real estate developers, it's our job to go in there and get beat up.

Fair play doesn't pertain in bargaining. What matters there is leverage.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

Information is a negotiator's greatest weapon.

Force is not inevitable. Diplomacy is still the desired means. Pressure is an element of the means.

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.

We're all negotiators.

Negotiating with the Taliban must be done from a position of strength. Negotiating from a position of weakness would be a disaster.

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.

Diplomacy is more than saying or doing the right things at the right time, it is avoiding saying or doing the wrong things at any time.

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

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

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

You should never appease terrorists. The mistake made by critics of the 'talking to your enemy' approach is to equate talking with appeasing.

There are not fifty ways of fighting, there's only one, and that's to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.

You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.

Diplomacy is letting someone else have your way.

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

Diplomacy without arms is music without instruments.

Too often ... in statecraft the object is to reach an agreement, which is only sometime—not always—the way to reach a result.

Negotiating is a little like jazz. You improvise on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you’re not always sure how to get there.