The louder the talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands ofinteractions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, allthe more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyonehas a small part of himself in both.

Flatteryis the infantry of negotiation.

A clever person turns great troubles into little ones andlittle ones into none at all.

Let us nevernegotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Truthsprings from argument amongst friends.

You can have power over people as long as you don't takeeverything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he'sno longer in your power.

Neverforget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes onand on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after while he gets to know something.

Soremarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises those that court himand admires whoever will not bend before him.

All creeds and opinions are nothing but the result of chance and temperament.

Nomatter how thin you make a pancake, it always has two sides.