““We continue to negotiate the treaty, endlessly apparently, to everyone’s continuing loss.” He smiled wryly. “You know how such things go. We no longer debate to gain real advantage but to come away from the table having created the perception that we have somehow won. ‘Politics,’ this is called.””

—  Sean Russell

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 28 (p. 389)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "“We continue to negotiate the treaty, endlessly apparently, to everyone’s continuing loss.” He smiled wryly. “You know …" by Sean Russell?
Sean Russell photo
Sean Russell 39
author 1952

Related quotes

“We continue to negotiate the treaty, endlessly apparently, to everyone’s continuing loss.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

He smiled wryly. “You know how such things go. We no longer debate to gain real advantage but to come away from the table having created the perception that we have somehow won. ‘Politics,’ this is called.”
Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 28 (p. 389)

Wendell Berry photo
Wendell Berry photo

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Standing by Words: Essays (2011), Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms (1982)
Context: It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Mark Kingwell photo

“For every apparent gain, in short, we now observe a balancing danger. This is the world we have created.”

Mark Kingwell (1963) Canadian philosopher

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 165.

Alex Salmond photo
Francesco Berni photo

“The loss of what we have is pain more dire
Than not to gain the thing that we desire.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Che 'l perder l'acquistato e maggior doglia
Che mai non acquistar quel che l'uom voglia.
XXV, 58
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Wendell Berry photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo

Related topics