Thoughts and Quotes on Negotiation

People have been negotiating with each other for thousands of years, and ever since, they have been talking about how to do it best. We thought it would be interesting to take a look at how (famous) people have viewed negotiations:

From our founder’s perspective

Chester Karrass: “In business, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”

From a political perspective

Richard Nixon: “Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.”

Dean Acheson: “Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.”

Howard Baker: “The most difficult thing in any negotiation, almost, is making sure that you strip it of the emotion and deal with the facts. And there was a considerable challenge to that here and understandably so.”

Francis Bacon: “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainty.”

From a poets perspective

Robert Browning:That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere here knows it.

That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred soon hit;
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses a unit.

Other perspectives

Harry Martinson: “The art of negotiation is perhaps what most deeply distinguishes man from the animals, and it is this art and this will to negotiate that has brought man forward, elevated him beyond the animals.”

Robert Estabrook: “He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of a diplomat.”

If you have any interesting quotes on negotiation, please share with us in the comments. Or, create your own quote and publish it on this blog.