Quotes about compromise

“I’m still waiting to hear how I should have compromised. Are you sure that ‘compromise’ and ‘capitulate’ are not synonymous in your vocabulary?”

Every concession gives rise to further concessions, we cannot back down, because behind us there is only an abyss, we must keep our promises and demand that they be kept.

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."

"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."

The process of changing your mind is a tricky one. You start at Position A, which you hold with stern stubbornness, resolving never to give it up. Then you start to question your original resolution. Is it wise to be so stubborn? Perhaps you should consider alternate ideas. You revise your original inflexibility a little, abandoning Position A and adopting Position B, which is very much like it in most ways, with only a few ifs and maybes added. Then, by a gradual series of compromises, private deals, and shifts of purpose, you slide spinelessly through the alphabet until you arrive at Position Z, the total opposite of your original point of view.

Man is an animal, but a social animal. Society for its manifold blessings asks in exchange sacrifice and compromise. Concession is the world's walking gait. Fevers and hallucinations sweep over us, it is true; but be they permitted to infect the public body, slaughter shall result. Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Halfway isn't all the way, but it's better than no way.

She was a student of history, valued the lessons of it. The worst atrocities began with half-measures, with apologies, compromising with the wrong side, shrinking from what had to be done.

Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when... he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. This is not just an aim but an obligation.

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

The three legs of the agreement-tripod are desire, data and doubt. Accuracy and honesty have nothing to do with it. ... Desire brings the participants together. Data sets the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames their questions.

To accept a little death is worse than death itself.