19 Quotes by Thomas Schelling

I have spoken to distance runners who, as exhaustion approaches, pick their stopping places a mile in advance, with the rule that any place more distant can be picked at any time before they reach the current target, and once picked even by the most fleeting resolve it becomes controlling.

Just as it may be easier to ban nuclear weapons from the battlefield in toto than through carefully graduated specifications on their use, zero is a more enforceable limit on cigarettes or chewing gum than some flexible quantitative ration.

I think I know whose side I'm on, and I'm sorry for him.

To go 60 years without any further use of nuclear weapons, I find astonishing. If I would have stood in front of an audience like this in 1960 and said we would finish the century without using nuclear weapons, no one would have credited me whatsoever.

The question was asked, 'What can seven divisions do to stop a Soviet attack? ... And the answer very explicitly was: They can guarantee that if the Soviets attack and kill or capture 300,000 Americans, the war won't end there.

This permeates life, ... I find it important in dealing with children, dealing with spouses, dealing with neighbors, dealing with customers.

Then, the major conflict was a very simple conflict.

It will be unusual to be deterred by small countries,

Social scientists have to either go out into the field themselves or be in very close contact with those in the field.