Hammer And Nail Quotes & Sayings

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

Did you know? Did the cross cast a shadow on your cradle? Did you shudder each time your hammer struck a nail? How much heaven and how much earth were in this baby at his birth? Did you know, or did you wonder? — Todd Agnew

It is a truism that when one is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The glory of art is that it can show this proverbial hammer how everything looks to a screwdriver--and to a plowshare, and to an earthenware pot. If reality is the sum of our perceptions, to acquire more varying points of view is to acquire, literally, more reality. — Matthew Woodring Stover

A woman with organizing skills can run a construction company without ever picking up a hammer and nail. — Warren Farrell

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

H. L. Mencken famously said that "every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." By now, however, I am no longer ashamed, because I do not identify with the government under which I live. Rather, I view it as a criminal organization that without provocation has chosen to make war on my just rights - not only mine, of course, but everyone's. Although this vile enterprise is my problem, because it robs and bullies me relentlessly and without mercy, it is not my responsibility: the nail is not the hammer. — Robert Higgs

And maybe men say they're glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that's just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can't do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses - any advantages men appear to have are pretty token.
You can't even hammer a nail with a phallus. — Chuck Palahniuk

Armed with a hammer and sickle, singer and folklorist A. L. Lloyd hit the nail on the head and cut to the quick on page one of his monumental study of folk song: 'The mother of folklore is poverty.'3 — Rob Young

A child doesn't understand a hammer until he's mashed his finger at a nail.
Get up and stop whining, maggot! You have forgotten the face of your father! — Stephen King

When we hit a nail with a hammer the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into a point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and head of the nail were infinitely big, if 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 the soul, and social degradation all at the same time, is a nail whose point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time — Simone Weil

If the only hammer you are given is the Internet, it's not surprising that every possible social and political problem is presented as an online nail. — Evgeny Morozov

I am, it is safe to say, not a practical man. The few attempts I've made to hammer in a nail have ended in broken thumbs, burst pipes, and water spraying everywhere with the house on fire. — John Niven

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars. — Carl Sandburg

What was beauty unless you intended to use it, like a hammer, or a key? It was just something for other people to use and admire, or envy, despise. To nail their dreams onto like a picture hanger on a blank wall. And so many girls saying, use me, dream me. — Janet Fitch

I held a nail in place and slammed it with the hammer. Best. Chore. Ever. — Cate Tiernan

It's a reality of art that the fewer lines you get, the harder it is. Cartooning is actually harder than realism. You have less to work with. It's like trying to build a house-if you have unlimited resources, you're in much better shape than if you get two bricks, a hammer, and a bent nail. — Ursula Vernon

Aunt Maria would mildly observe that, next time Uncle Podger was going to hammer a nail into the wall, she hoped he'd let her know in time, so that she could make arrangements to go and spend a week with her mother while it was being done. — Jerome K. Jerome

Many times when we help we do not really serve ... Serving is also different from fixing. One of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement, Abraham Maslow, said, If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment of life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time. — Rachel Naomi Remen

The art world is a jungle echoing to the calls of vicious jealousies and ruthless combat between dealers and collectors; but I have been walking in the jungles of business all my life, and fighting tooth and nail for pictures comes as a form of relaxation to me. — Armand Hammer

All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level. — George R R Martin

Slow power can grind away any stagnant enemy. But fast power, one that can travel where you go, do what you wish it to as effectively as a hammer hitting a nail, that is the power that lops off heads and steals crowns. Can I trust you with it? — Pierce Brown

El Condor Pasa"

I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail
Yes I would
If I could, I surely would
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.
Yes I would
If I only could, I surely would.

Away, I'd rather sail away
Like a swan that's here and gone
A man gets tied up to the ground
He gives the world
Its saddest sound, its saddest sound

I'd rather be a forest than a street.
Yes I would
If I could, I surely would.
I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet
Yes I would
If I only could, I surely would — Simon & Garfunkel

Doing it all the time, whether or not we are in the mood, gives us ownership of our writing ability. It takes it out of the realm of conjuring where we stand on the rock of isolation, begging the winds for inspiration, and it makes it something as do-able as picking up a hammer and pounding a nail. Writing may be an art, but it is certainly a craft. It is a simple and workable thing that can be as steady and reliable as a chore - does that ruin the romance? — Julia Cameron

When the hammer strikes a nail, the extreme force of the blow on the broad head is transmitted without loss to the point. The head of the nail is the whole of eternity and the point of that nail is pressed to the center of the human heart. " [ quoting Simone Weil from memory ] — George Oppen

To a hammer, every problem is a nail," we said on the team but we called him 'the screwdriver'. We were confronted with stubborn nails and we needed a sledgehammer. — Massimo Marino

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

The good nail will do its job regardless what kind of hammer comes its way and what kind of surface it sits on. — Rita Zahara

You must know the big ideas in the big disciplines, and use them routinely - all of them, not just a few. Most people are trained in one model - economics, for example - and try to solve all problems in one way. You know the old saying: to the man with a hammer, the world looks like a nail. This is a dumb way of handling problems. — Charlie Munger

There's a dream in the
space between the hammer and the nail: the dream of
about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream, but the nail will
take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever. — Richard Siken

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and when you're a left-wing sorehead, everything is an occasion to damn the rich. — George Scialabba

We ought to realize by now (see Korea, see Vietnam, see Afghanistan, see Iraq, see Iran) that deploying the US military, or dealing billions of dollars a year of arms to our ally of the moment that can serve as a regional rival to our enemy of the moment, is not always the best way to make threats go away. Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer, but that doesn't make every international problem a nail. — Rachel Maddow

Just as to a man with a hammer, everything is a nail, so in the age of science and technology, everything is a scientific and technical matter to be solved by scientific and technical means. — Os Guinness

Many hammer all over the wall and believe that with each blow they hit the nail on the head. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Thus when Hiroko came up and said, "Nadia, this crescent wrench is absolutely frozen in this position," Nadia sang to her, "That's the only thing I'm thinking of - baby!" and took the crescent wrench and slammed it against a table like a hammer, and twiddled the dial to show Hiroko it was unstuck, and laughed at her expression. "The engineer's solution," she explained, and went humming into the lock, thinking how funny Hiroko was, a woman who held their whole ecosystem in her head, but couldn't hammer a nail straight. — Kim Stanley Robinson