Here are some thoughts on the alleged virtue of compromise, to inspire the would-be leaders of a second party in America, should we ever get one:
If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
— Margaret Thatcher
The ‘morality of compromise’ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.
— Andrew Carnegie
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
Compromise, hell! … If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?
-Jesse Helms
From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.
—Charles Sumner
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.
—Ayn Rand
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