“When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.”

—  John Maynard Keynes , book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position." by John Maynard Keynes?
John Maynard Keynes photo
John Maynard Keynes 122
British economist 1883–1946

Related quotes

Adolf Galland photo

“Never abandon the possibility of attack. Attack even from a position of inferiority, to disrupt the enemy's plans. This often results in improving one's own position.”

Adolf Galland (1912–1996) German World War II general and fighter pilot

Quoted in "The First and the Last," 1954.
The First and the Last (1954)

Joseph Addison photo

“With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

This is attributed to Addison in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) with a citation of "Economy and Benevolence" in Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments (1794) but that was a publication of a contemporary "Mr. Addison" in several volumes, and not the poet. Vol. III of that publication (in 1796), on page 205, does contain these lines, but as part of an anonymous ancecdote.
Misattributed

Michael Moorcock photo

“The hardest compromise to make is when you decide to appear to compromise. Often the deception becomes the reality long before you realize it.”

Michael Moorcock book The Mad God's Amulet

Source: Book 1, Chapter 5 “The Machine” (p. 160), The Mad God's Amulet (1968)

Edmund Burke photo

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

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775), Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 169

P.G. Wodehouse photo

“It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Cocktail Time

Source: Cocktail Time (1958)

Joseph Gurney Cannon photo

“Nearly all legislation is the result of compromise.”

Joseph Gurney Cannon (1836–1926) American politician

Maxim quoted in a tribute to Cannon on his retirement, reported in The Sun, Baltimore, Maryland (March 4, 1923); Congressional Record (March 4, 1923), vol. 64, p. 5714.

Mikhail Gorbachev photo

“No one is in a position to describe in detail what perestroika will finally produce. But it would certainly be a self-delusion to expect that perestroika will produce "a copy" of anything.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: I began my book about perestroika and the new thinking with the following words: "We want to be understood". After a while I felt that it was already happening. But now I would like once again to repeat those words here, from this world rostrum. Because to understand us really — to understand so as to believe us — proved to be not at all easy, owing to the immensity of the changes under way in our country. Their magnitude and character are such as to require in-depth analysis. Applying conventional wisdom to perestroika is unproductive. It is also futile and dangerous to set conditions, to say: We'll understand and believe you, as soon as you, the Soviet Union, come completely to resemble "us", the West.
No one is in a position to describe in detail what perestroika will finally produce. But it would certainly be a self-delusion to expect that perestroika will produce "a copy" of anything.

Paulo Freire photo

“One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.”

Paulo Freire book Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Related topics