Leadership Quote by Harri Holkeri

Holkeri’s line is the kind of pragmatism that sounds almost bloodless until you remember what it’s pushing against: the political addiction to moral scorekeeping. He’s not dismissing right and wrong; he’s quarantining them. The first clause strips the speaker of the comforting role of judge, which is exactly the posture politicians are trained to adopt for their own side. By claiming his opinion “has nothing to do” with the task at hand, he reframes leadership as engineering conditions for coexistence rather than winning the argument.

The subtext is a warning about the limits of righteousness. In polarized conflicts, being correct can be a solvent that dissolves the possibility of governing; it sharpens identities, hardens humiliations, and turns negotiation into surrender. Holkeri’s diction is telling: “bring together” is physical and social, not ideological; “transform” suggests a process, not a breakthrough moment. “Antagonism” isn’t treated as sin but as raw material. “Cooperation” is the measurable output.

Context matters because Holkeri’s career sat close to the practical realities of coalition politics and international mediation, where outcomes aren’t awarded for purity. The line reads like an operator’s creed from the late Cold War into the post-1990s era: stability is built by threading rival camps into shared incentives, face-saving compromises, and institutions that outlast the mood of the moment.

It works rhetorically because it refuses the audience a dopamine hit. No villains, no victory lap - just the unglamorous premise that peace is a craft, not a verdict.