Quotations on Compromise

My candle burns at both its ends;
It will not last the night;
But oh, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last.

~ Winston Churchill

It is the weak man who urges compromise - never the strong man.

~ Elbert Hubbard

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

~ James Russell Lowell

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity.

~ Bertrand Russell

If you are not very clever, you should be conciliatory.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

~ Edmund Burke

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

~ G.K. Chesterton

People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

~ Samuel Johnson

Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both.

~ Tyron Edwards

Better bend than break.

~ Proverbs

- Scottish Proverb