93 Tools Quotes

Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.

Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but 'vector' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.

I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.

I don't like sewing machines. I don't understand how a needle with a thread going through the tip of it can interlock the thread by jamming itself into a little goddamn spool. It's contrary to nature and it irritates me.

Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.

[In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to a hidden mine filled with gems then easily gathered by conventional tools, not a shiny new space-age machine for penetrating previously inaccessible worlds.

I started, actually, to make my first animated cartoon in 1920. Of course, they were very crude things then and I used sort of little puppet things.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

In the end nobody knows how it's done - how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

When these guitar mags bring up that stuff up and say such and such came up with this and that which is pushing the boundaries, I just say, 'let's step back for a minute and admit something: nothing has happened for the last 100 years.' And it's okay. It's not a bad thing ... We're all working with 'tools' that have been in existence for the last 100 years and there hadn't been a new 'tool' for a long long time.

Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners. ... If they're really good, they don't hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anything.... Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another.

I was in the first submarine. Instead of a periscope, they had a kaleidoscope. 'We're surrounded.'

'A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.'

If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back.

Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been sorted with the help of a computer.

We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us (1964)

Generally, I dislike fixedness in both long swords and hands. Fixedness means a dead hand. Pliability is a living hand. You must bear this in mind.

A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.

Fire is the best of servents; but what a master!

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool- so useful that it still exists.

Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

If you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail.

If you're going to shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?

Man is a tool-using animal...Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who's forgotten words so I can have a word with him?...

on rice cookers: The problem is, this is a unitasker. And we've got rules about that kind of thing here. (throws the rice cooker out the window.)

Allow me to present.. my bean board. Like it? I made it myself. Wouldn't Martha be proud?

Technology does not automatically improve conversation, communication or behaviour.

I sense that novel of my dreams is in the Remington SL3 - although it writes much faster than I can spell.

This baby (the Remington SL3 typewriter) speaks electric Shakespeare at the slightest provocation and will rap out a page and a half if you just look at it hard.

I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit.

It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine. It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go. Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules.

Here you have some razor blades. And now, play with them!

Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.

The natural born reason we didn't git no yew-ranium when we crosses the li'l yew tree and the gee-ranium is on account of cause we didn't have no geiger counter.

In order to write all a man needs is paper and a pencil. Furthermore, when a thing has been written, it is written forever. When it is printed, nothing can stop it from being printed again and again if the thing wants to be printed again and again. I must therefore be a writer.

The only reason I need these gloves is cause of my hands.

A pair of scissors is a ... wonderful instrument ... an occupation I can lose myself in ... my pleasure in cutting things out grows ever greater. Why didn't I think of it before.

'We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when they hear us-' He beamed at Ralph. 'That was what you meant, didn't you? That's why you got the conch out of the water.' Ralph pushed back his fair hair. 'How did your friend blow the conch?' 'He kind of spat,' said Piggy. 'My auntie wouldn't let me blow on account of my asthma. He said you blew from down here.' Piggy laid a hand on his jutting abdomen. 'You try, Ralph. You'll call the others.' Doubtfully, Ralph laid the small end of the shell against his mouth and blew. There came a rushing sound from its mouth but nothing more. Ralph wiped the salt water off his lips and tried again, but the shell remained silent. 'He kind of spat.' Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter. 'He blew from down here.' Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm. Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the palms, spread through the intricacies of the forest and echoed back from the pink granite of the mountain. Clouds of birds rose from the treetops, and something squealed and ran in the undergrowth.

It's got three speeds!

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

A murder without gleaming scissors is like asparagus without the hollandaise sauce - tasteless.

'Have you pen and ink, Master Doctor?' 'A scholar is never without them, your Majesty,' answered Doctor Cornelius.

In my first year I was taught about the slide rule. They said, 'The slide rule is important. Without it you can do nothing. The slide rule is the modern weapon of efficiency. With the slide rule you can get from here to the stars. Buy it, use it - your slide rule!' Within one year it was, 'Burn the slide rule. The calculator can add up with none of this fucking sliding the shit around and working out where that bit in the middle goes. Smash it over your head.'[1]

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Rochester: [checking his equipment] Shaving cream, brush, razor, smelling salts.

Film will only become art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

Muse who in the past inspired me to sing of the throes of love: Go and repose. What I need is a sword, rivers of gold, and acrid prose.

'The Silver Shoes,' said the Good Witch, 'have wonderful powers. And one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in the wink of an eye. All you have to do is to knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go.'

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) (6.54)

Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right.' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

Of course not ... but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it.

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold and bramble-dew, Steel-true and blade-straight, The great artificer Made my mate.