The Best Quotes About Disagreement
I've collected thousands of quotes over the past 10+ years.
Here are the best ones I've found so far about disagreement...
"He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation." -Robert Estabrook
"When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.” –Dale Carnegie
“There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right.” –Ed Catmull
“Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding.” –Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
"One of the most important insights anyone in business can have is that it’s not cruel to tell people the truth respectfully and honestly." -Patty McCord
"A long dispute means that both parties are wrong." -Voltaire
"Exhausting someone in an argument is not the same as convincing him." -Tim Kreider
"In a productive conversation, people treat their feelings as a rough draft. Like art, emotions are works in progress. It rarely serves us well to frame our first sketch. As we gain perspective, we revise what we feel. Sometimes we even start over from scratch." -Adam Grant
"The absence of conflict is not harmony, it's apathy." -Kathleen Eisenhardt, Jean Kahwajy, and L.J. Bourgeois III
"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip." -Winston Churchill
"Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you." -John Wooden
"Being curious about another person's view is the most powerful way to change their view." -Kevin Kelly
"Don't worry about accepting or rejecting the other person's story. First work to understand it. The mere act of understanding someone else's story doesn't require you to give up your own." -Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, & Sheila Heen
"The truth is, the only thing more painful than confronting an uncomfortable topic is pretending it doesn't exist." -Patrick Lencioni
"Slapping a label on someone is a great way to render them invisible and destroy a hard conversation." -David Brooks
"Rather than talking only to people who agree with you, or collecting examples that fit your ideas, see people who contradict you, disagree with you, and put forward different ideas as a great resource for understanding the world." -Hans Rosling
"The greatest tragedy of mankind comes from the inability of people to have thoughtful disagreement to find out what's true." -Ray Dalio
"Constantly search for overlapping areas of agreement and dwell there. Disagreements will appear to be edge cases." -Kevin Kelly
“People’s minds are changed through observation and not argument.” -Will Rogers
“As far as I’m concerned, ‘consensus’ is a four-letter word! Consensus fails to satisfy anyone’s desires, but it does so equally, and so it’s accepted. It is through seeking consensus that we get mediocrity.” -Patrick Lencioni
"If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. Hang out with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you." -Kevin Kelly
"The gap between what you're really thinking and what you're saying is part of what makes a conversation difficult." -Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, & Sheila Heen
"The greater the distance between us and an adversary, the more likely we are to oversimplify their actual motives and invent explanations that stray far from their reality. What works is not perspective-taking but perspective-seeking: actually talking to people to gain insight into the nuances of their views." -Adam Grant
