You can’t always come up with the optimal solution, but you can usually come up with a better solution. A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence. Or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, “Huh. It works. It makes sense.” That doesn’t happen often, of course, but it happens.

Barack Obama (b. 1961) American politician, US President (2009-2017)

Quoted in William Finnegan, “The Candidate,” The New Yorker (31 May 2004)
    (Source)

While a state senator in Illinois.