Kennedy presents compromise as a necessary feature of democratic politics rather than a simple abandonment of principle. In a plural society, political groups often hold sharply different views, and government must find ways to accommodate competing interests without allowing one side to dominate completely. Compromise therefore acts as a restraint on political extremes and helps preserve space for disagreement within the same political system.

In Profiles in Courage, Kennedy links this idea to the responsibilities of legislators. Elected representatives must answer to constituents and parties, but they must also consider the interests of those who disagree with them and the wider national interest. The quotation reflects Kennedy’s view that political questions rarely divide neatly between wholly right and wholly wrong positions. Democratic government, in this account, depends partly on negotiation, restraint and a willingness to accept imperfect outcomes in order to maintain cooperation among people with conflicting convictions.

Full quotation

“It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers—the wets and the drys, the one-worlders and the isolationists, the viviseclionists and the anti-vivisectionists—from crushing the group on the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum. The fanatics and extremists and even those conscientiously devoted to haid and fast principles are always disappointed at the failure of their Government to rush to implement all of their principles and to denounce those of their opponents. But the legislator has some responsibility to conciliate those opposing forces within his state and party and to represent them in the larger clash of interests on the national level; and he alone knows that there are few if any issues where all the truth and all the right and all the angels are on one side.”