Quotes about Negotiation

How can we get what we truly want while satisfying the needs and concerns of others in our lives—family members, work colleagues, clients, and others?

Instead of attacking, focused on taking away the stick.

Take the eighteenth-century general who had fallen into disfavor with the great Prussian warrior king, Frederick the Great. Coming upon the king, the general saluted him with the greatest respect, but Frederick turned his back. "I am happy to see that Your Majesty is no longer angry with me," murmured the general. "How so?" demanded Frederick. "Because Your Majesty has never in his life turned his back on an enemy," replied the general.

If you open a door, however, as Diane Nash did with her persistent questions, you offer the other a way out and all your power can be deployed in persuading them to take it. In short, rather than working to frustrate the other, focus on redirecting their attention to a positive outcome.

Effective negotiation requires a persistent focus on what is most important.

You need confidence to stand up for yourself in the face of the other's reaction. You need power to be able to follow through on your No if the other refuses to respect it.

I had it in my contract with CBS, a very weird clause that was never written before and certainly not since, that if I wanted to do a variety show within the first five years of the contract, CBS would have to put it on for 30 shows.

The best way to begin disarming is to begin-and the United States is ready to conclude firm agreements in these areas and to consider any other reasonable proposal.

War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

When a company or an individual compromises one time, whether it's on price or principle, the next compromise is right around the corner.

He said the best contract lawyers were the ones who heard the unspoken. The hopes and dreams and fears that both sides held, sometimes so tightly they didn't even know it themselves. A good contract attorney has to be a mediator first and foremost. And the best mediator is someone who can translate conflicting emotions into some form of harmony. But to do that, they have to look beneath the surface. See the unseen. Hear the unspoken.

I think people forget that bipartisanship is really the burden of the victor, not the loser.