The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Political speech2 quotes
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. — Edmund Burke · 1775Constantly bearing in mind that in entering into society "individuals must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest," it will be my desire so to discharge my duties as to foster with our brethren in all parts of the country a spirit of liberal concession and compromise. — Andrew Jackson · 1833Legal writing1 quote
No society, certainly not a large and heterogenous one, can fail in time to explode if it is deprived of the arts of compromise, if it knows no ways of muddling through. No good society can be unprincipled; and no viable society can be principle-ridden. — Alexander M. Bickel · 1962Political literature1 quote
If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788