Firmness in support of fundamentals, with flexibility in tactics and methods, is the key to any hope of progress in negotiation.
Interpretation
Successful negotiation requires a balance of unwavering principles and adaptable strategies.
The quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining strong principles while being open to adjusting methods and tactics in negotiations. It suggests that to achieve progress, one must have a firm commitment to fundamental values but also be willing to be flexible in their approach to reach an agreement.
In practice
This quote could be used in a business meeting to emphasize the importance of being principled yet adaptable during contract negotiations.
If a man's associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
The libraries of America are and must ever remain the home of free and inquiring minds. To them, our citizens-of all ages and races, of all creeds and persuasions-must be able to turn with clear confidence that there they can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.
You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
When pressure mounts and strain increases everyone begins to show the weaknesses in his makeup. It is up to the Commander to conceal his: above all to conceal doubt, fear, and distrust.
Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Circumstances-what are circumstances? I make circumstances
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
If we can't face our losses, we can't be present either fully to everything that is. When people have cut off or not made peace with some part of themselves, they miss out on other aspects of life.
The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were on my knees.
You know, when I sit in meetings and things are very tense and people take things extremely seriously and they invest a lot of their ego, I sometimes think to myself, 'Come on, you know, there's life and there's death and there is love.' And all of that ego business is nonsense compared to that.
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