QuoteProject
If you are negotiating you must do so in a spirit of reconciliation, not from the point of view of issuing ultimatums.
Nelson Mandela
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Negotiation should focus on understanding and healing rather than creating conflict through demands.

In this quote, Nelson Mandela emphasizes the importance of approaching negotiations with a mindset aimed at reconciliation. Rather than adopting a confrontational stance that involves issuing ultimatums, one should strive for mutual understanding and cooperation, leading to more productive and harmonious outcomes.

Themes

NegotiationReconciliationPeaceUnderstandingCooperation

In practice

Example use cases

In a business meeting discussing contract terms, one could use this quote to encourage a collaborative atmosphere.

More from Nelson Mandela

We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.
Nelson MandelaRead
What freedom am I being offered while the organization of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.
Nelson MandelaRead
The past is a rich resource on which we can draw in order to make decisions for the future, but it does not dictate our choices. We should look back at the past and select what is good, and leave behind what is bad.
Nelson MandelaRead
We signal that good can be achieved amongst human beings who are prepared to trust, prepared to believe in the goodness of people.
Nelson MandelaRead
After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one's person.
Nelson MandelaRead
I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.
Nelson MandelaRead

Similar quotes

And lips say β€œGod be pitiful,” Who ne'er said β€œGod be praised.”
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningRead
No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichΓ©s and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.
Edward BernaysRead
This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.
Joni MitchellRead
The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act.
Francis HutchesonRead
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Sigmund FreudRead
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
John LennonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Nelson Mandela | QuoteProject