Even when you are right, it is good to make concessions: people will recognize you were right but admire your courtesy. More is lost through holding on than can be won by defeating others. One defends not truth but rudeness.
[Aun en caso de evidencia, es ingenuidad el ceder, que no se ignora la razón que tuvo y se conoce la galantería que tiene. Más se pierde con el arrimamiento que se puede ganar con el vencimiento; no es defender la verdad, sino la grosería.]
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 183 (1647) [tr. Maurer (1992)]
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(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:
It is civil to yield, even in those things wherein we have greatest reason and certainty: for then all know, who had reason on their side: and besides the reason, Gallantry is also discovered in the procedure. There is more esteem lost, by a wilfull resistence, then there is got by carrying it by open force. For that is not so much a defending of truth, as a demonstration of Clownishness.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]
Even in cases of obvious certainty it is fine to yield: our reasons for holding the view cannot escape notice, our courtesy in yielding must be the more recognised. Our obstinacy loses more than our victory yields: that is not to champion truth but rather rudeness.
[tr. Jacobs (1892)]
Even with the proof on your side, it is well to make concession, for your reasons are known and your gentlemanliness is recognized; more is lost in contention than can be gained in consummation, for such does not defend the truth, but only exhibits bad manners.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]
Quotations about:
concession
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
They had all been brought up, as we still are, to believe in “the deterrent.” Firm resolve, a readiness to threaten war, would avert war itself. Some Power would always give way. This usually happened, indeed happened so often that the wisdom of the method seemed sure. In 1914 all the Powers, for different reasons, expected the yielding to come from the other side.
A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
“What Else Indeed?” New York Review of Books (5 Aug 1965)
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To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“A Word to Husbands,” Marriage Lines: Notes of a Student Husband (1964)
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DAUPHIN: Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
As self-neglecting.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry V, Act 2, sc. 4, l. 80ff (2.4.80-81) (1599)
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