NEGOTIATION QUOTES
quotations about negotiation
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
Every negotiation is unique, like every basketball or football game.
STEVE GATES
The Negotiation Book
The hallmark of futile negotiations is that each side regards overarching reality as a problem for the people on the other side of the table, rather than one for everyone at the table.
WILLIAM VOEGELI
Never Enough
Parents are often resistant to the idea of negotiating with their children, managers with their employees, or police with suspects because negotation seems to imply giving away power. Ironically, parents negotiate with children, managers with employees, and police with suspects all the time, but without the negotiation label. Negotiation often involves applying power, recognizing someone else's power, or discussing arrangements that may realign power, but it does not necessarily imply giving away power. Negotiation is in fact often a way of exercising power more effectively.
BERNARD MAYER
The Dynamics of Conflict: A Guide to Engagement and Intervention
If there is negotiation, it must be rooted in mutual respect and concern for the rights of others.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
UN speech, September 25, 1961
The thing about negotiations, not to mention the manipulation, is you can't go too far in any direction. Refusing once is good, twice is usually okay but a third is risky. You never know when the third person will stop playing and you end up with nothing.
SARAH DESSEN
Lock and Key
Each negotiation is embedded in a larger context of co-being, which involves empathy and awareness of common goal/condition.
BILYANA MARTINOVSKI
"Emotion in Negotiation", Handbook of Group Decision and Negotiation
As a process, negotiation involves common and often overlapping interests. It is, after all, the recognition of a mutual interest or joint problem that produces a dialogue. The underlying mutuality of the decision to negotiate is in fact the key to the process.
BRIGID STARKEY
International Negotiation in a Complex World
Any seasoned deal maker will tell you that spontaneous negotiation's a bad strategy; the ad hoc approach will leave you ripped-off, busted, conned, stiffed, outsmarted and generally holding the shitty end of the stick.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
Negotiation is not just about proposal and counterproposal. In reallife negotiations, it is of crucial importance to be able to persuade others, i.e., to influence how other people reason about different alternatives.
KATIA SYCARA & TINGLONG DAI
"Agent Reasoning in Negotiation", Handbook of Group Decision and Negotiation
We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Radio and Television Address to the American People, July 25, 1961
While negotiation is central to our lives, that does not imply that we are good at it -- still less that we find it a pleasurable activity. When engaged in complex negotiations, people become tired, confused, and emotional, making naive, inconsistent and rash decisions. They fall prey to personal prejudices, find it hard to weigh up complex alternatives dispassionately, and are subject to a range of misapprehensions and fallacies.
SHAHEEN FATIMA
Principles of Automated Negotiation
Everything is a negotiation with you, Brekker. You probably bartered your way out of the womb.
LEIGH BARDUGO
Crooked Kingdom
Negotiation is in some ways like chess. You are prepared to sacrifice particular pieces in the interest of winning the game. In chess you know the pieces but you can't see into the other person's mind. In negotiation you don't necessarily know the "pieces". You have to discover and develop your own pieces and find ways of uncovering your counterpart's.
DAVID OLIVER
How to Negotiate Effectively
Negotiation is like sport: Every success is based on training and appropriate preparation.
MARC O. OPRESNIK
The Hidden Rules of Successful Negotiation and Communication: Getting to Yes!
So, the first challenge is you. It is people who negotiate; not machines, or companies. We all have prejudices, values, ideologies, preferences, pressures, objectives, and judgment, as will the other party in your negotiations. So one part of our journey will involve you understanding why your greatest challenge in negotiation is yourself and how, by nature, you naturally see the world from your perspective rather than that of others.
STEVE GATES
The Negotiation Book
Anger can be an effective negotiating tool, but only as a calculated act, never as a reaction.
MARK MCCORMICK
What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School
In any negotiation, the one who first gives a number is the loser.
KENNETH EADE
Beyond All Recognition
Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Inaugural Address, January 20 1961
When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
The Economic Consequences of the Peace