A Quote by James Gleick

As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars.

James Gleick

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About Alive All Kinds Bicycle Book Builders Even Every Go Guns Hammer Hammers Household Ideally Invented Kinds Like Likewise Nail Nails Needs Never Nothing Obsolete Perfect Pound Quaint Quickly Range Say Scooters Speed Suited Task Technology Thousand Tool Varied Well Will Without World

Quote Author

James Gleick
American - Author
Born: August 1, 1954

James Gleick

Personally, I think government is a tool, like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build or you can use a hammer to destroy; there is nothing intrinsically good or evil about the hammer itself. It is the purposes to which it is put and the skill with which it is used that determine whether the hammer's work is good or bad.

Molly Ivins

When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails. But nations without great military power face the opposite danger: When you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like nails.

Robert Kagan

The song 'If I Had a Hammer' is geared toward people who don't have a hammer. Maybe before I had a hammer I thought I'd hammer in the morning and hammer in the evening. But once you get a hammer, you find you don't really hammer as much as you thought you would.

Ellen DeGeneres

If my only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.

Sholem Asch

You should never do two things. You should hammer one nail all your life, and I didn't do that; I hammered on a lot of nails like a xylophone.

Brion Gysin

Some guys talk about swinging through the ball, but I think about impact like hammering a nail. My dad actually had me hammer nails to understand the concept.

Xander Schauffele

Steve Bannon was my right-hand man for, like, seven years. He's a hammer. And when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. He's very sure and very smart. Very driven, very patriotic. He's not most of the things that people say.

Brock Pierce

You don't have to just hit nails with hammers, you know; you can use a hammer to beat somebody's brains in, to make armor or break a car window. You can do all kinds of things with your instrument outside of its surface purpose. My bass is my crutch but the best crutch I could have.

Stephen Bruner

If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Mark Twain

A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.

Milan Kundera

A Dionysian life task needs the hardness of the hammer and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy to be found even in destruction.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Propaganda is a weapon that the Confederacy wields best, and wields heaviest. It is their hammer. And when all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

Jeff Grubb

Technology is usually fairly neutral. It’s like a hammer, which can be used to build a house or to destroy someone’s home. The hammer doesn’t care. It is almost always up to us to determine whether the technology is good or bad.

Noam Chomsky

If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails. - Abraham Maslow

Laurell K. Hamilton

When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be just the same. The point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail. The point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time.

Simone Weil

A Quote by James Gleick

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