Tools First Quotes & Sayings

Some people think the first tools were weapons, but that's all upside down. First of all, people figure out the tools. It's the crutch before the club every time. — Neil Gaiman

Islam was, at least during its first centuries, the religion of reasoning, responsible individuals capable of telling what was true from what was false as long as they were well equipped to do so, as long as they possessed the tools of knowledge - specifically, the collections of Hadith. The fact that, over the course of centuries, we have seen believers who criticize and judge replaced by muzzled, censored, obedient, and grateful Muslims in no way detracts from this fundamental dimension of Islam. — Fatema Mernissi

PowerPoint presentations, the cesspool of data visualization that Microsoft has visited upon the earth. PowerPoint, indeed, is a cautionary tale in our emerging data literacy. It shows that tools matter: Good ones help us think well and bad ones do the opposite. Ever since it was first released in 1990, PowerPoint has become an omnipresent tool for showing charts and info during corporate presentations. — Clive Thompson

[Look at] the chair you are lounging in. . . . Could you have made it for yourself? . . . How [would you] get, say, the wood? Go and fell a tree? But only after first making the tools for that, and putting together some kind of vehicle to haul the wood, and constructing a mill to do the lumber and roads to drive on from place to place? In short, a lifetime or two to make one chair! . . . If we . . . worked not forty but one-hundred-forty hours per week we couldn't make ourselves from scratch even a fraction of all the goods and services that we call our own. [Our] paycheck turns out to buy us the use of far more than we could possibly make for ourselves in the time it takes us to earn the check. . . . Work . . . yields far more in return upon our efforts than our particular jobs put in. . . . — Timothy Keller

If you get health, then you have opportunity for literacy. Health first, then literacy. Once you have literacy, then you have a chance to bring in the new tools of communication. Let people reach out and have access to the latest advances. — Bill Gates

When we were old enough, Mom felt like she had given us all the tools she could to have happy lives, and she wanted us to do just that. Live. Make our own mythology, not be swallowed up by hers. Live the kind of happy, drama-free, painful and joyful mortal life she couldn't, and at the end of it come home to be ushered into our next life by the two people who brought us here in the first place. I know you think mortality is evidence that they don't care, but giving us the the ability to grow and change and progress and then finish? That was the greatest gift two ageless, eternal, very very stuck gods could think to give the children they love more than anything. — Kiersten White

It is the well educated who will improve society - and they will improve it, at first, by criticizing it, and we are giving them the tools to criticize it. Naturally, as students, the brighter of them will begin their improvements upon society by criticizing us." To Owen, old Archie Thorndike would sing a slightly different song: "It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change. I'm not going to change; I'm going to retire! Get the new headmaster to make the changes; that's when I made changes - when I was new." "WHAT CHANGES DID YOU MAKE?" Owen Meany asked. "That's another reason I'm retiring!" old Thorny told Owen amiably. "My memory's shot! — John Irving

Radio, or at least the kind of radio we're proposing to do, can cut through that. It can reach people who would otherwise never hear your work, and of course I find that very notion inspiring. Radio stories are powerful because the human voice is powerful. It has been and will continue to be the most basic element of storytelling. As a novelist (and I should note that working my novel is the first thing I do in the morning and the very last thing I do before I sleep), shifting into this new medium is entirely logical. It's still narrative, only with different tools. — Daniel Alarcon

And young people who are learning digital skills discover that the real challenge is coming up with an image that resonates, first of all, with your self and hopefully, with an audience. They can learn all these new techniques and think that they're easier to use, but creating great images isn't about the tools. — Jerry Uelsmann

First, I'd like to see the basic tools such as compilers, debuggers, profilers, database interfaces, GUI builders, CAD tools, and so forth fully support the ISO standard. — Bjarne Stroustrup

Reason gives us tools to control nature. But it cannot indicate which uses of nature are good or humane. Reason shows us how to achieve our goals. But it cannot determine which goals are right to pursue in the first place. It ascertains what we can do, but not what we should do. What works, but not what is good. Facts, but not values. As a result, many people concluded that the only way to plumb the Big Questions was to "escape from reason" (the title of one of Schaeffer's books). That is, to leave reason behind and take a leap of faith from the lower story to the upper story. — Nancy Pearcey

Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime ... What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascent, that this is the road to the stars. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bad User on Device is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated. — Alan Kay

A similar attitude causes some people to spurn the use of commentaries and similar resources in their Bible study, as if their own uninformed first impression is just as good as careful study using reference tools. It is becoming more and more common all the time to hear people say, 'I don't read commentaries and books about the Bible. I limit my study to the Bible itself.' That may sound very pious, but is it? Isn't it actually presumptuous? Are the written legacies of godly men of no value to us? Can someone who ignores study aids understand the Bible just as well as someone who is familiar with the scholarship of other godly teachers and pastors? — John F. MacArthur Jr.

would react with violent seizures. Because of the rudimentary working conditions, and the difficulty of correctly reproducing body parts in miniature, this body had been built using only parts from the biggest and fittest of cadavers. The straps were not sufficient to hold me. I tore free. Lightning was cascading through copper rods buried in my chest. I ripped them out. Elixir and blood were being pumped into my body by a machine. I smashed it. I roared like an animal as I began destroying the very tools that had brought me to life. The bellows were manned by one of Dippel's assistants. I remember him looking at me with an expression of terror as I picked him up by the neck. I killed my first man only ten seconds after I had been born. With blood and Elixir pouring from my self-inflicted wounds, I — Larry Correia

The basic idea of email has remained essentially unchanged since the first networked message was sent in 1971. And while email is great for one-on-one, formal correspondence, there are far better tools for collaboration. — Ryan Holmes

Every day, first responders put their own lives on the line to ensure our safety. The least we can do is make sure they have the tools to protect and serve their communities. — Joe Lieberman

Knowing of how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is, like it or not, an essential ingredient to personal success in the twenty-first century. — Howard Rheingold

Taxes are a barbaric remnant of ancient times in which early farmers, tied to the land, no longer able to roam freely, unable to fight back with awkward agricultural tools the way they once could with hunting implements, became victims, first, of itinerant plunderers, then of bandits settling down beside them to become the governments we know today. — L. Neil Smith

Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first. Secondly, it is to teach them. Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves. — Richelle E. Goodrich

There seems to be at least one common denominator to all intelligent life: it was bipedal and bimannual. Four legs was the most practical number for any animal on any planet, and it seems that nature has nothing else to work with. When she decided to give intelligence to a species, she taught him to stand on his hind legs, freeing his forefeet to become tools of his intellect. And she usually taught him by making him use his hands to climb. As a Cophian biologist had said, Life first tries to climb a tree to get to the stars. When it fails, it comes down and invents the high-C drive. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

I allude to Back to the Future in the 1985 story to let folks know it was an inspiration and because it literally was the most time-travelly bit of pop culture we had in the mid 80's. I can talk about their tools for considering change. First, the book is metafictive in a traditional sense where I'm showing and telling the reader that the act of writing and reading is a reflexive way to push boundaries of real and literal time travel. Writers and readers are time travellers. The question is what we do with that time we traveled when we leave a book, leave a page. — Kiese Laymon

I don't feel [the] excitement you have when you first walk into a recording studio. It now feels like a tool. — Jonathan Meiburg

First responders will be on the frontlines if there is a terrorist attack in our communities, and we must provide them with the tools they need to do their difficult jobs. — Ed Markey

God never allows a storm without first providing the tools to calm the storm. — Bill Johnson

There's something that just happens to you when you have a baby, and you look at their little eyes for the first time when you're holding them. They've been safe inside your belly for almost 10 months, and now they're in your arms. Intuition kicks in, where you will do anything for them and you have all the tools inside of you to take care of them. — Hilary Duff

a detailed low-level one for complex situations and a simple high-level one for routine use. The second can usually be built easily using the tools provided by the first. In — Marijn Haverbeke

Photography is the first art wherein the tool does most of the work. — John Updike

The Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've had on PC. — John Carmack

I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future. — Carl Sagan

I thought about evolutionary historians who argued that walking was a central part of what it meant to be human. Our two-legged motion was what first differentiated us from the apes. It freed our hands for tools and carried us onthe long marches out of Africa. As a species, we colonized the world on foot. Most of human history was created through contacts conducted at walking pace, even when some rode horses. I thought of the pilgrimages to Compostela in Spain; to Mecca; to the source of the Ganges; and of wandering dervishes, sadhus; and friars who approached God on foot. The Buddha meditated by walking and Wordsworth composed sonnets while striding beside the lakes.
Bruce Chatwin concluded from all this that we would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if we moved continually on foot across the surface of the earth. I was not sure I was living or thinking any better. — Rory Stewart

I would argue that masturbation is the human animal's most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization. Our hands evolved to grip tools, all right - including our own. You see, thinkers, inventors, and scientists are usually geeks, and geeks have a harder time getting laid than anyone. Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by masturbation, it's doubtful that early humans would have ever mastered the secrets of fire or discovered the wheel. And you can bet that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein never would have made their discoveries if they hadn't first been able to clear their heads by slapping the salami (or "knocking a few protons off the old hydrogen atom"). The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe. — Ernest Cline

Culture is not created by command. It creates itself, arising spontaneously from the necessities of men and their social cooperative activity. No ruler could ever command men to fashion the first tools, first use fire, invent the telescope and the steam engine, or compose the Iliad. Cultural values do not arise by direction of higher authorities. They cannot be compelled by dictates nor called into life by the resolution of legislative assemblies. — Rudolf Rocker

There is a great need for a new approach, new methods and new tools in teaching, man's oldest and most reactionary craft. There is great need for a rapid increase in the productivity of learning. There is, above all, great need for methods that will make the teacher effective and multiply his or her efforts and competence. Teaching is, in fact, the only traditional craft in which we have not yet fashioned the tools that make an ordinary person capable of superior performance. In this respect, teaching is far behind medicine, where the tools first became available a century or more ago. — Peter Drucker

'Girls' was my first audition. I'd just taken an audition class, and I was excited to implement those tools. — Allison Williams

Once a first paradigm through which to view nature has been found, there is no such thing as research in the absence of any paradigm. To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. That act reflects not on the paradigm but on the man. Inevitably he will be seen by his colleagues as "the carpenter who blames his tools." The — Thomas S. Kuhn

A workman who wants to do his work well must first prepare his tools. — Confucius

The first thing that makes you a tough fighter is in your head and in your heart, then your tools. It has nothing to do with someone teaching you how to be tough. — Tank Abbott

The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena. — Jaron Lanier

When you're working with wood, every stroke of the tool dulls the edge just a little. Once, in my last year at the violin-making school, I had been passing through the workshop when I overheard one of the younger students ask the instructor how it was that his tools stayed sharp so much longer than ours. "I use them less," he said, looking out the window, which was where he addressed his replies to obvious questions. It took him two cuts to get where we took fifty. Art didn't need to cut a hundred times to get where he wanted to be. He lived the life he wanted to live the first time around. — James N McKean

Classes and routines are first and foremost intellectual tools for reducing complexity. If they're not making your job simpler, they're not doing their jobs. — Steve McConnell

[On Richard M. Nixon:] The Republican nominee would be far worse than another Eisenhower - he is Tricky Dicky of the first magnitude. His entire record is one of opportunism. I cannot feel that there is the remotest sincerity in him, and that clearly he would be the tool of the highest bidder, which is always 'big business. — Marguerite Rawalt

But they can rule by fraud, and by fraud eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish the job of killing off the Constitution.'
'What sort of tools?'
'More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason - or are manipulated into reasoning - that the entire population must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can't be trusted. — Robert Anton Wilson

Fourthly, the way of the artisan. The way of the carpenter is to become proficient in the use of his tools, first to lay his plans with true measure and then perform his work according to plan. Thus he passes through life. — Miyamoto Musashi

In our quest to quickly make three-dimensional objects, we can miss out on the experience of making something that helps give us our first understandings of form and material, of the way a material behaves
'I press too hard here, and it breaks here' and so on. Some of the digital rendering tools are impressive, but it's important that people still really try and figure out a way of gaining direct experience with the materials. — Jonathan Ive

Another one is cleaning up tool that have been used and not put away and are cluttering up the place. This is a good one because one of the first warning signs of impatience is frustration at not being able to lay your hand on the tool you need right away. If you just stop and put tools away neatly you will both find the tool and also scale down your impatience without wasting time or endangering the work. — Robert M. Pirsig

If I had a pair of pliers on me, I'd rip my ears off so I wouldn't have to listen to this anymore. Unfortunately, Brody doesn't even own a toolbox - I found that out when I first moved in and looked around for tools to fix the leaky kitchen faucet with. Brody had shrugged and said, "Shit leaks, man. Life doesn't always give you tools."

I'd wanted to point out that yes, life does give you tools - that's why we have fucking Home Depot. But arguing with Brody's logic is an exercise in futility — Elle Kennedy

The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it furnished him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, armaments, or playwiths but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor in the first place. Your hair and make-up and the costume are the tools that you have, and it makes you feel like that person. When you look in the mirror, you don't feel like yourself, and it changes the way you move. I love that stuff. — Matt Ross

Homo erectus was the first to hunt, the first to use fire, the first to fashion complex tools, the first to leave evidence of campsites, the first to look after the weak and frail. — Bill Bryson

First and foremost arms are tools in the service of rival nations, pointing at the possibility of a future war. — Alva Myrdal

We are here because we share a fundamental belief: that poverty, illiteracy, disease and inequality do not belong in the twenty-first century. We share a common purpose: to eradicate these ills for the benefit of all. And we share a common tool to achieve this: the Millennium Development Goals. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

We are the Western World. We read, see, think. Left. To. Right. We can't help it.
..The problem with Top to Bottom is that it's unAmerican. We want to begin in the depths and climb our way upward. But our typographic system argues against this and wins, and images follow suit.
..What you have to be careful to remember about Big and Small, is that they can extend to infinity in either direction. Consider: Big can always be bigger and Small smaller. The atom is the Universe and vice versa. And they're both identical.
..Left to Right, Top to Bottom, Big and Small; on a two-dimensional plane, all of these tools rely on a relative truth. Now we come to In Front Of and In Back of, which for us are big, fat lies. Very useful though, and the first of many at your disposal. — Chip Kidd

My wife Juliana and I first saw Eurovision while on our honeymoon in Greece in 2006, and we were amazed by it. They basically recreate a music video onstage, and pyro cannons, LED video screens, background dancers, fireworks, costume changes, and wind machines are their tools. — Seamus Dever

In 2006, the Vogelstein team revealed the first landmark sequencing effort by analyzing thirteen thousand genes in eleven breast and colon cancers. (Although the human genome contains about twenty thousand genes in total, Vogelstein's team initially had tools to assess only thirteen thousand.) In 2008, both Vogelstein's group and the Cancer Genome Atlas consortium extended this effort by sequencing hundreds of genes of several dozen specimens of brain tumors. As of 2009, the genomes of ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, lung cancer, and several forms of leukemia have been sequenced, revealing the full catalog of mutations in each tumor type. Perhaps — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Until the first petroleum well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, whale oil *was* oil. In Leviathan, a fine history of whaling, Eric Jay Dolin enumerates whale Phil's manifold applications: 'It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leather, paints, and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution.' In fact, its use as a lubricant impervious to extremes in temperature persisted well into the space age
NASA lubed its moon landers and other remotely operated vehicles with sperm whale oil until the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986. — Sarah Vowell

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. — Confucius

T h e C o n t e x t Anyone who wishes to master an activity must first understand its tools and rules — Anonymous

"There's no CEO for the government." But if you were CEO for a day at the government, would you have tools and reports and wherewithal to look at government the way a business would look at its lines of business, its spending, its revenue? I've actually been working, first by myself and then with a group of people, on then on and off, and now much more on, almost since the I time left Microsoft. — Steve Ballmer

For humans, tools point to the necessity of moral inquiry. Because nature makes only ambiguous prescriptions for us, we are compelled to ask, what is good? If you give a young boy a hammer for the first time and watch his face, you will see an awareness of this burden dawning on him (as he turns to the cat, for example). — Matthew B. Crawford

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history. — Wayne Dyer

I like the word 'gumption' because it's so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn't likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

"A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption.

If you're going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven't got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won't do you any good. — Robert M. Pirsig

Letting users control your site can be terrifying at first. From day one we were asking ourselves, "What is going to be on the front page today?" You have no idea what the system will produce. But stepping back and giving consumers control is what brought more and more people to the site. They have a sense of ownership and discovery at the same time. If you give users the tools to spread and share their interests with others, they will use them to promote what is important to them. — Kevin Rose

We've been slaves to our tools since the first caveman made the first knife to help him get his supper. After that there was no going back, and we built till our machines were ten million times more powerful than ourselves.
We gave ourselves cars when we might have learned to run; we made airplanes when we might have grown wings; and then the inevitable. We made a machine our God. — John Brunner

If a craftsman wants to do good work, he must first sharpen his tools. — Confucius

A human being, in order to function fully and effectively in this world, needs to develop in himself all four of these tools of maturity: 1) physical energy and bodily self-control; 2) emotional calmness and expansive feeling; 3) dynamic, persistent will power; and 4) a clear-sighted, practical intellect. Remove any one of these aspects from the equation and the equation itself becomes distorted. Each aspect depends for its perfection on the other three ... These tools are best developed in sequence: bodily awareness first, then sensitivity of feeling, then will power, and last of all, intellect. — Swami Kriyananda

Find ways for people to shape their work and the company In addition to stripping leaders of the traditional tools of power and relying on facts to make decisions, we give Googlers uncommon freedom in shaping their own work and the company. Google isn't the first to do so. For over sixty-five years, 3M has offered its employees 15 percent of their time to explore: "A core belief of 3M is that creativity needs freedom. That's why, since about 1948, we've encouraged our employees to spend 15% of their working time on their own projects. To take our resources, to build up a unique team, and to follow their own insights in pursuit of problem-solving."103 Post-it Notes famously came out of this program, as did a clever abrasive material, Trizact, which somehow sharpens itself as it's used. — Anonymous

For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples. — Hu Shih

Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us. — Nhat Hanh

For all we know, the larger part of the motive for trying to expand science is not self-serving; it is merely mistaken. The idealistic element in it is its desire to achieve in the understanding of man what science has achieved in the understanding of matter. Its mistake is in not seeing that the tools for the one are of strictly limited utility for the other, and that the practice of trying to see man as an object which the tools of science will fit leads first to underrating and then to losing sight of his attributes those tools miss. (The mere titles of B.F. Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and Herbert Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man" will, in opposite ways, suffice.) If it be asked, "But what did the nonscientific approach to man and the world give us?" The answer is: "Meaning, purpose, and a vision in which everything coheres — Huston Smith

Presently he added to himself the power of the horse and the ox, he borrowed the carrying strength of water and the driving force of the wind, he quickened his fire by blowing, and his simple tools, pointed first with copper and then with iron, increased and varied — H.G.Wells

When The Daily Muse initially wanted to launch a job board, our first ideas were insanely (and needlessly) complex. We wanted to integrate with social networks, gather rich personal data to build predictive algorithms, and put together numerous cool visualization tools before launching out to the world. We were just sure users would love it! — Kathryn Minshew

Every artist is, first of all, a craftperson thoroughly knowledgeable about the materials, tools, and techniques of his or her particular medium and skilled in using many of them. — Freeman Patterson

By the altar, which is made of massive slabs of stone untouched by tools since hewn from the quarry and set up in this vast edifice, a barefooted priest wearing a linen tunic waits for the Levite to hand over the turtledoves. He takes the first one, carries it to a comer of the altar, and with a single blow knocks the head from its body. [ ... ] Joseph has nothing more to accomplish here, he must withdraw, collect his wife and child, and return home. Mary is pure once more, not in the strict sense of the word, because purity is something to which most human beings, and above all women, can scarcely hope to aspire. — Jose Saramago

It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil. — Dag Hammarskjold

Unforgivable Curses are the three most powerful and sinister spells known to the wizarding world, and are tools of the Dark Arts. They were first classified as "Unforgivable" in 1717. They are the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra, the Cruciatus Curse, Crucio, and the Imperius Curse, Imperio. — George Duckett

My first teacher was Steven Spielberg. I worked on Amazing Stories. That was my first job, as a writer and as a story editor. Watching him and his command of the tools of filmmaking, and his admiration for writing and the story itself, was the greatest lesson I ever had. — Mick Garris

I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education. It is the key to the survival of the human race. We have to plan for our collective future
and the first step begins with the social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children. As humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to think and to adapt - as educators, storytellers, and communicators our responsibility is to continue to do so. — George Lucas

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools. — Mao Zedong

First we shape our tools, thereafter they shape us — Marshall McLuhan

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much. — David Mitchell

Techniques are like tools: The more you have, the more options for getting a job done - but you have to know what you are building first. — Joseph A. Micucci

Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities - what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction - what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of "time management." — Stephen Covey

Of course, I love tools. I also love arranging them, to the point where I came up with a name for my organizing metric: first-order retrievability. — Adam Savage

I learned that the first technology appeared in the form of stone tools, 2.6 million years ago. First entertainment comes evidence from flutes that are 35,000 years old. And evidence for first design comes 75,000 years old - beads. And you can do the same with your genes and track them back in time. — Zeresenay Alemseged

I learned first of all not to be intimidated by any visual effects that I don't understand. It can all be learned. You can then use them as tools to tell your story. I also learned that you have to be really vigilant, the more complex the movie, to not lose yourself and to not lose sight of the priority. — Shawn Levy

A similar concern about using the web to provide just-in-time information shows up among physicians arguing the future of medical education. Increasingly, and particularly while making a first diagnosis, physicians rely on handheld databases, what one philosopher calls "E-memory." The physicians type in symptoms and the digital tool recommends a potential diagnosis and suggested course of treatment. Eighty-nine percent of medical residents regard one of these E-memory tools, UpToDate, as their first choice for answering clinical questions. But will this "just-in-time" and "just enough" information teach young doctors to organize their own ideas and draw their own conclusions? — Sherry Turkle

There's an assumption that if someone writes in the first person it's self-indulgent and self-regarding. I just look at it as a tool to understand the world and my experience in it. It's not a tool to understand myself. — Michael Pollan

I think the educational value is what comes first. I've always thought that the most effective tools we have for disseminating information, i.e. education, is television and film. — Morgan Freeman

I didn't have a drill, so I had to make my own. First I heated a long nail in the fire, then drove it through a half a maize cob, creating a handle. I placed the nail back on the coals until it became red hot, then used it to bore holes into both sets of plastic blades. — William Kamkwamba

We're not going to teach you the easy way to be poly. The tools we recommend will seem hard, because they are - at first. — Anonymous

Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved. — Michael Crichton

The year I was born, 1955, the first big disease-eradication program in the world was declared for malaria. After about a decade of work, they realized that, at least in the tropical areas, they did not have the tools to get it done. — Bill Gates

The concept of reconciliation is not irretrievable, but I am convinced that before we theologians can interpret the depths of the divine action of reconciliation we must first articulate the profound deformities of Christian intimacy and identity in modernity. Until we do, all theological discussions of reconciliation will be exactly what they tend to be: (a) ideological tools for facilitating negotiations of power; or (b) socially exhausted idealist claims masquerading as serious theological accounts. In truth, it is not at all clear that most Christians are ready to imagine reconciliation. — Willie James Jennings

Flannery craved a cigarette. Her nerves were so tense that only nicotine could soothe them, and for the first time, she genuinely understood how the drug worked. It wasn't just a prop or an affectation. It was a tool for mental health. — Sylvia Brownrigg

The scientist was first discovering the laws of God, in the faith that the workings of the world could be reformulated into the terms of the word, the reason, and the law which they were obeying. As the hypothesis of God made no difference to the accuracy of his predictions, he began to leave it out and to consider the world as a machine, something which followed laws with no lawgiver. Lastly, the hypothesis of pre-existing and determinative laws became unnecessary. They were seen simply as human tools, like knives, with which nature is chopped up into digestible portions. — Alan W. Watts

When computers came along, I felt for the first time that I had the proper tools for the kind of theoretical work I wanted to do. So I moved over to that, and that got me into psychology. — Herbert A. Simon

A paradigm is a powerful theoretical and methodological framework which defines the working lives of thousands of intelligent and disciplined minds. And paradigms do not attract the loyalty of such minds unless they 'work'. One of the first things a graduate student learns is that if there is a discrepancy between the paradigm and what he or she has discovered, then the automatic assumption is that the paradigm is right and the student wrong. Just as a good workman never blames his tools, so the diligent student never blames his paradigm — John Naughton

if you want to set the tone or mood, make sure you get some of the first words in. Think about it, which meeting would you prefer to attend? One that starts with "Let's get going because we have so much to do today and a lot of fires to put out" or one that starts with "I'm happy to see you all today - it's great that we have such a strong team working on these exciting new projects"? Same reality but a very different outlook. Then sit back and watch how people's engagement and motivation improve in response to your power lead. It's one of the most effective tools in this book. — Shawn Achor

Mon wants this transition to be as peaceable as possible. That is, of course, a noble goal. And in late nights the chancellor confided in Leia that she is wisely struck by the fear of what happened the first time the parasite of Palpatine squirmed under the skin. How easy it was for him to prey on the anxieties of the galaxy. How simple it was for him to turn system against system by stoking the fires of xenophobia, anger, selfishness. (And here Luke's voice echoes in her mind: The ways and tools of the dark side, Leia.) How do you form an Empire? By stealing a Republic. And how do you steal a Republic? By convincing its people that they cannot govern themselves - that freedom is their enemy and that fear is their ally. Palpatine — Chuck Wendig