Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree
-- Dean Acheson

Conflicts are a normal part of life; how we deal with them can make a big difference. Often when people resolve conflicts, one person ends up a winner, and one loses out. This may solve the problem for the moment, but resentment and bad feelings can cause more problems later. Another way to look at conflicts is to try to find a WIN-WIN solution, in which both sides can benefit. In this way, conflicts are turned into opportunities to grow and make things better. This approach is the cornerstone of "conflict resolution" - an important tool for bringing peace into our personal lives, our communities and to our world. -- Robert Alan Silverstein

 

Start out with an ideal and end up with a deal.
-- Karl Albrecht

Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have...tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. -- Saul Alinsky * Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. -- Saul Alinsky

“The Law of Win/Win says, ”Let’s not do it your way or my way; let’s do it the best way”
-- Greg Anderson

 

* Terrorism constitutes a direct attack on the values the UN stands for: the rule of law; the protection of civilians; peaceful resolution of conflicts; and mutual respect between people of different faiths and cultures,” -- Kofi Annan

* Mediation and reconciliation work is about a profound quest for justice and social transformation. But at the same time, they are about service, solidarity, about exploring and rediscovering the human spirit that has been lost or shattered through human conflict, cruelty, ignorance and greed… -- Hizkias Assefa

The most difficult thing in any negotiation, almost, is making sure that you strip it of the emotion and deal with the facts.
-- Howard Baker

 

* If you start a conversation with the assumption that you are right or that you must win, obviously it is difficult to talk. ~ Wendell Berry

* There is no time left for anything but to make peace work a dimension of our every waking activity -- Elise Boulding

 

If you can’t go around it, over it, or through it, you had better negotiate with it.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

“Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.
-- Buddha

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

 

* “Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.” ~ Jimmy Carter “One of the most basic principles for making and keeping peace within and between nations. . . is that in political, military, moral, and spiritual confrontations, there should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat” ~ Jimmy Carter

* “Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.” ~ Jimmy Carter

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
-- William Ellery Channing

 

* “If you believe in a security strategy -- a strategy of more friends and fewer enemies, a strategy of greater cooperation and a strategy of keeping America better at home as we grow more diverse -- we have to build the minds and hearts to build this kind of world.” ~ Bill Clinton

* Only reverence can restrain violence — reverence for human life and the environment. -- William Sloane Coffin

Peace produced by suppression is neither natural nor desirable.
-- Anna Julia Cooper

 

* The reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. - The Dalai Lama

* The reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. - The Dalai Lama

I feel very strongly that you can't just beat people up anymore; you have to work hand in hand and find ways to compromise, and get big business involved, because it won't happen otherwise. -- Ted Danson

* Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resorting to physical strength. -- Barbara Deming

Adopt a new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins
-- W. Edwards Deming

 

There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication.... Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing. -- John Dewey

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." -- Peter F. Drucker

* "I wish that the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program could be taught in every classroom in America, because we are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another." -- Marian Wright Edelman

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police” -- Albert Einstein Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved through understanding. -- Albert Einstein * "There's been a quantum leap technologically in our age, but unless there's another quantum leap in human relations, unless we learn to live in a new way towards one another, there will be a catastrophe." -- Albert Einstein

* Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved through understanding. -- Albert Einstein

* 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 “Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.” -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Blessed is the man who having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact.
-- George Elliot.

* We need to learn and to show others that there are tried and tested, powerful ways of containing and resolving conflict which do not require the use of force. -- Scilla Elworthy * Dialogue is a non-confrontational communication, where both partners are willing to learn from the other and therefore leads much farther into finding new grounds together -- Scilla Elworthy

More and more individuals worldwide are realizing that war does not solve conflict, nor resolve long-standing cycles of violence. As more of those who have this understanding communicate it to policy-makers and more particularly, start implementing it in their own lives and localities, change will start to happen.
-- Scilla Elworthy

If governments were kind, they'd realize that conficts are resolved and wars prevented not by armies but by ordinary people.
-- Scilla Elworthy

* The god of Victory is said to be one-handed, but Peace gives victory to both sides. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of a diplomat.
-- Robert Estabrook

WIN-WIN
We Can Work It Out

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Conflict Resolution Day - 3rd Thursday in October