Compromise In Politics Quotes & Sayings

This is possible only if we retain our trust in negotiation and in the sincere desire, among politicians, to compromise with their opponents. Hence in both Britain and America it is necessary for conservatives to defend the politics of compromise, and to protect all those institutions and customs that give a voice to opposition. This — Roger Scruton

Today's Republican Party ... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance. — Thomas E. Mann

Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues. — Matt Taibbi

That is why everyone in politics, and we do it, must make sure that they do not depend on one single interest group. A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution. — Angela Merkel

Ever since it formed, the Tea Party has struck me as a kind of weird generational echo, forty years on, of the young leftists of the late 1960s. The 1960s leftists, like the Tea Party now, had unrealistic goals and were hostile to compromise. Both saw themselves as cultural forces up against a shadowy establishment. Both treated politics as street theater and had a curious fondness for using violent rhetoric and making apocalyptic pronouncements. Generationally speaking, the 1960s Left and the Right of today are the same group... p. 232 — Mike Lofgren

I shall oppose all slavery extension and all increase of slave representation in all places, at all times, under all circumstances, even against all inducements, against all supposed limitations of great interests, against all combinations, against all compromises. — Daniel Webster

The French have a penchant for absolutism, for thinking that things are all one way or all another, which is why their politics are marked by a general inability to compromise and why they tend to hold their personal opinions until the bitter end, even after they have clearly lost an argument. — Mark Zero

I don't compromise my principles for politics. — Chris Christie

My reading of American religious history is that religion always functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. Once you identify the faith with a particular candidate or party or with the quest for political influence, ultimately it is the faith that suffers. Compromise may work in politics. It's less appropriate to the realm of faith and belief. — Randall Balmer

It may be necessary to make compromises in everyday politics, but we cannot compromise with our conscience. — Ludwig Erhard

The absence of even rough agreement on the facts puts every opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtful compromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those - like the White House press office - who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately, and with the best backdrop. — Barack Obama

It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself. — Sandra Day O'Connor

Everybody in the world has to compromise. I don't know one person that gets everything they want, so the politicians are going to have to figure that out and stop pointing out, "He shook hands with a Democrat in 1989. He ate with a Republican last week." It's petty high school, even junior high stuff going on. It's junior high politics going on, so it's a shame. — Ice Cube

He has,in short,reached his peak as a hunter,exuberantly altered from the pale,overweight statesman of ten months ago. Africa's way of reducing every problem of existence to dire alternatives-shoot or starve,kill or be killed,shelter or suffer,procreate or count for nothing-has clarified his thinking,purged him of politics and its constant search for compromise. — Edmund Morris

They did not like each other particularly, would never have called one another friend or even have associated under different circumstances, and wherever they were, an argument seemed to lie only a few seconds' journey from them in any given direction.

But something had begun to grow between them as well--a sort of cooperative understanding--and the moments in which this was most obvious were the moments in which one of the two men would forgo his own strongly held way of being and embrace the other's, as if giving a moment of his life to his opposite in tribute. — Gavriel Savit

Politics is compromise. — Paddy Ashdown

At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It insists on the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing. — Barack Obama

In other words, our constitution was designed by people who were idealistic but not ideological. There's a big difference. You can have a philosophy that tends to be liberal or conservative but still be open to evidence, experience, and argument. That enables people with honest differences to find practical, principled compromise. On the other hand, fervent insistence on an ideology makes evidence, experience, and arguments irrelevant: If you possess the absolute truth, those who disagree are by definition wrong, and evidence of success or failure is irrelevant. There is nothing to learn from the experience of other countries. Respectful arguments are a waste of time. Compromise is weakness. And if your policies fail, you don't abandon them; instead, you double down, asserting that they would have worked if only they had been carried to their logical extreme. — Bill Clinton

We're getting the sort of 'compromise' American politics specializes in: the one where things are intentionally made worse for most people in the hopes that if things are made bad enough, the other side will cave. — Alex Pareene

Violent overthrow of the revolution is revolutionary, and compromise with the revolution is revolutionary. — Douglas Wilson

Politics is always driven by competing worries. — George F. Will

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known. — Abraham Lincoln

Don't pretend that you can just be oblivious to politics. You can't. What you never do is break your personal code. Have a code and keep it. You should never compromise what your priorities are. — Kamala Harris

Experience suggests that the first rule of politics is never to say never. The ingenious human capacity for maneuver and compromise may make acceptable tomorrow what seems outrageous or impossible today. — William V. Shannon

There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of civilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little in order to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences, this is compromise. He who stands unyielding and immovable upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on. — Louis L'Amour

Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy. — Roland Huntford

Our minds become slaves to those we see as having total power to control us and to cause pain to us. We are quick to give up control of ourselves to those who have the power to rule us as long as they also have the power to feed us. This is the fundamental construct of a feudal society. — Majid Kazmi

Here the further question of the relation of spiritual life to public life and politics comes in. It must mean, for all who take it seriously, judging public issues from the angle of eternity, never from that of national self-interest or expediency; backing our conviction, as against party of prejudice, rejecting compromise, and voting only for those who adopt this disinterested point of view. Did we act thus, slowly but surely a body of opinion - a spiritual party, if you like - might be formed; and in the long run make its influence felt in the State. But such a programme demands much faith, hope, and charity; and courage too. — Evelyn Underhill

But for a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power ... They were true believers who meant what they said, whether it was 'No New Taxes' or 'We are a Christian Nation.' In fact, with their rigid doctrines, slash-and-burn style, and exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved, this new conservative leadership was eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders during the sixties. As with their left-wing counterparts, this new vanguard of the right viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil. Activists in both parties began developing litmus tests, checklists of orthodoxy, leaving a Democrat who questioned abortion increasingly lonely, any Republican who championed gun control effectively marooned. In this Manichean struggle, compromise came to look like weakness, to be punished or purged. You were with us or you were against us. You had to choose sides. — Barack Obama

America still sees itself as essential and as destiny's instrument. And each splinter group within our culture - left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular - sees itself as morally, even "theologically," superior to its rivals. It is not just about politics. It is about being better than one's evil opponent. We don't just disagree, we demonize the "other." And we don't compromise. — Frank Schaeffer

There must be no compromise with slavery - none whatever. Nothing is gained, everything is lost, by subordinating principle to expedience. — William Lloyd Garrison

No America without democracy, no democracy without politics no politics without parties, no parties without compromise and moderation. — Clinton Rossiter

The politics of the possible was being replaced by the politics of purity. — H.W. Brands

Partisan rancour and party politics and ideology have got in the way of compromise - and compromise is the only thing that has ever made politics successful. — Kevin Spacey

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them. — Barry M. Goldwater

As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy, or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. An antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with - about 225 years old - has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia - politics as theater - and very little substance, compromise, and action. A "can-do" country is now saddled with a "do-nothing" political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving. By every measure - the growth of special interests, lobbies, pork-barrel spending - the political process has become far more partisan and ineffective over the last three decades. — Fareed Zakaria

If we are to put an end to division, people from all political persuasions will have to stop fighting one another and seek true unity, not just a consensus that benefits one party. — Ben Carson

Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art. — Joyce Carol Oates

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship. — James Russell Lowell

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy. — Timothy Garton Ash

We know enough to know that all of this is not quite right. And we know enough to know that settling for what's not quite right is quite wrong. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

This was my first real lesson in politics ... If you are cast on a desert island with only a screwdriver, hatchet, and the chisel to make a boat with, why, go and make the best one you can. It would be better if you had a saw, but you haven't, so with men. — Theodore Roosevelt

Statesmen exhibit five key commitments: 1) A commitment to principles above politics; 2) An ability to compromise without abandoning principle; 3) A commitment to truth over spin; 4) A commitment to courage over cowardice; and 5) A commitment, or willingness, to give up power. — Tom Coburn

Anyone who has lived here for long enough has seen it all before: opposing sides of the political spectrum ferociously criticising each other, getting hot under the collar about this and that, bringing up all sorts of allegations and innuendos. Then just as it looks as if the argument is about to get physical, harmony breaks out. A dialogue is opened, an accord or a compromise is found. And suddenly, just as quickly as it came, all that fiery rhetoric subsides and everyone realizes it was all synthetic, put on for show when all along some deal was imminent anyway. It's as if every politician is merely an actor in a little theatre, and as soon as the curtain falls and the public can't see them any more they all slap each other on the back, tot up the takings and go out for an expensive meal. — Tobias Jones

[L]ike it or not, the right timing is an inescapable part of human endeavor and thus of politics. . . . But some activists suggest that "timing" is irrelevant in public policy and politics. In their view, it's just another "excuse" by "incrementalists," another example of their traitorous cowardice, another reason why they should be condemned and purged. . . . There is a fundamental ethical and practical difference between compromise and prudently fighting for the most good that can be gained in the face of overwhelming odds. . . . Realizing the constraints and limits of this world should guard us against unrealistic expectations of what politics can or should achieve. And yet, the examples of Wilberforce and Lincoln, among many others, demonstrate that moral purpose can be successfully pursued in politics with prudence. — Clarke D. Forsythe

We have to stop all of the fighting and talking without listening and find a sense of compromise. It's very evident that it could possibly happen. No matter what your political views are, we're in a very dangerous state of politics. — Edwin Hodge