Wrong Tool Quotes & Sayings

So, Abe, how do you know what to listen to inside?"
"What do you mean?" Abe sips his tea
..."Well, how do you know if something is a good thing for you or a bad thing?"
..."Shit." Abe sighs. "That's a big question. You're looking at instinct like it's a foolproof system. Like it's a global positioning device."
"I thought that's why we have it. That's why animals have it. To protect."
"Sure, but it's a tool. Not THE tool, one tool. More like an old-fashioned map, not a GPS. You know, it's great to have a map, but there's the chance you can hold it upside down, read it wrong. Sometimes you just have to see where the road leads. — Deb Caletti

Are there so many fascinating, exciting things to do or so many challenges pressing down upon you that it is hard to keep focused on that which is essential? When things of the world crowd in, all too often the wrong things take highest priority. Then it is easy to forget the fundamental purpose of life. Satan has a powerful tool to use against good people. It is distraction. He would have good people fill life with 'good things' so there is no room for the essential ones. Have you unconsciously been caught in that trap? — Richard G. Scott

We could unleash all this technology at once. You can imagine what would happen then. But that's not the interesting thing."
"What is the interesting thing?"
"The interesting thing is that we have a moral sense. It is on punched cards, perhaps the most advanced and sensitive moral sense the world has ever known."
"Because it is on punched cards?"
"It considers all considerations in endless and subtle detail," he said. "It even quibbles. With this great new moral tool, how can we go wrong? I confidently predict that, although we could employ all this splendid new weaponry I've been telling you about, we're not going to do it. — Donald Barthelme

I have a magical work in a magical way. I give magical service for magical pay. — Florence Scovel Shinn

Women tend to communicate early and often about a problem. Men are more likely to view communication as a tool, and when they see it as the wrong tool for the job, they believe it should be stored neatly in the toolbox. — Shawn T. Smith

If New Horizons is, like Kaylee said, the tool God gave me to create a better life, I'm pretty sure I'm using it wrong. — Jessica Verdi

Good. Coffee is good for you. It's the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave. — Ernest Hemingway,

Nobel was a genuine friend of peace. He even went so far as to believe that he had invented a tool of destruction, dynamite, which would make war so senseless that it would become impossible. He was wrong. — Alva Myrdal

THE LOCARD EXCHANGE PRINCIPLE Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool mark he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects. All of these and more, bear mute witness against him. This is evidence that does not forget. It is not confused by the excitement of the moment. It is not absent because human witnesses are. It is factual evidence. Physical evidence cannot be wrong, it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value. - Edmund Locard — D.P. Lyle

Because of your arrogance you have become nothing but a puppet, a court jester who believes that he has no choice other than what you remembered you could do a long time ago. Your only reason for existence now is to keep men in fear of what we see as Demons. They are the ones who control what may happen to them if they choose to take, what we are led to believe is the wrong path. The trail leads us away from his protection.
You are arrogant and because of your vanity, you have become blinded to the truth. Do you not know that you cannot take a soul from a man whose future has already been set? I also know this is someone you cannot overrule have the power to overrule? Even if you tried to take me from here, your power would be overruled. You are the tool of the carpenter, not the carpenter. — Peter Fryer

The letter K was the first one in the alphabet which had not, with more or less justification, been used to designate other vitamins, and it also happened to be the first letter in the word 'koagulation' according to the Scandinavian and German spelling. — Henrik Dam

Every hero mirrors the time and place in which he lives. He must reflect men's innermost hopes and beliefs in a public way. — Marshall Fishwick

That's literally one of those things where if I tell you I have to kill you. A witch's wand is a powerful tool and could be disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands. — Amanda Kelly

Money is a tool. Used properly it makes something beautiful- used wrong, it makes a mess! — Bradley Vinson

Accents can be a great tool to tell a story - but if you do it wrong, it pulls you right out of the movie. — Jeremy Renner

Your happiness drives me. — Airicka Phoenix

We live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line. Not only is this wrong, but it's dangerous. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying. — Brene Brown

You just remember who the enemy is," Haymitch says. "That's all. — Suzanne Collins

The magic was a tool, though a natural, mysterious tool. In its awareness of the magic, his human nature had desired to connect with it, to use it. The whisperings were the voice of his own awakening, not the seductive call of a dark power. Using it was not corruption, but a natural extension of his being. And he could control the manner in which he used it. He would. — Derek Donais

Religion is our desperate attempt to understand our world. And our past. We live in darkness, surrounded by mysteries. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What will happen to us after we die? Religion also gives us something more: a code of conduct, a blueprint of right and wrong, a guide to human decency. Just like any other tool, it can be misused. — Anonymous

Perl is like vise grips. You can do anything with it but it is the wrong tool for every job. — Bruce Eckel

Spirituality is not a disability - it is a phenomenal empowerment of life. — Jaggi Vasudev

Fear is the devil's most powerful tool because he can't always convince a good man to do wrong, but he can paralyze his will with fright, keeping a good man from doing what is right. It eventually results in the same end. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Poetry led me by the hand out of madness. — Anne Sexton

I'm not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as transcendent. Because that's the point of literature, I think: to connect. — John D'Agata

I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world. — Alex Haley

Business plans are the tool existing companies use for execution. They are the wrong tool to search for a business model. — Steve Blank

Shadows cannot harm the almighty! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Understand this clearly: you can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. — John Ruskin

As the statistician George E. P. Box wrote, "All models are wrong, but some models are useful." What he meant by that is that all models are simplifications of the universe, as they must necessarily be. As another mathematician said, "The best model of a cat is a cat."
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The key is in remembering that a model is a tool to help us understand the complexities of the universe, and never a substitute for the universe itself. — Nate Silver

On the path of love we don't feel we necessarily have control. In the yoga of love we feel it's only God who does everything. We can't breathe one breath without God. — Frederick Lenz

Pedestals aren't safe ... one wrong move and a nasty tumble is sure to follow. Humility is a great grounding tool. — Sanjo Jendayi

But the truly ambitious teams find relief in honesty when they've lost, because it's the diagnostic tool that leads to a solution - here's what we did wrong and let's fix it, so we don't ever have to feel this way again. Great teams explain their failure; they don't excuse it. Then they pay a visit to Charles Atlas and get stronger. When you explain a loss aloud, it's no longer a tormenting mystery. I believed in that brand of honesty my whole career, and I knew at least one other coach who believed in it too. — Pat Summitt

This is a word that is not a scientific term. This is a rhetorical tool of psychological manipulation ... Because everyone knows if you dare to say homosexuality is wrong ... you are a homophobe, which means you have a mental illness. That's what's built into this terminology. — Scott Lively

There is nothing wrong with Facebook in itself, except that it is not a very good tool to express the quality of your relationships. — Beeban Kidron

That's what makes the creationist viewpoint not just staggeringly wrong, but sadly impoverished. In twisting around the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they take a powerful tool for understanding the world and try to make it into a barrier to understanding instead. — Bill Nye

A moral principle is not a command to act or to forbear acting in a given way: it is a tool for analyzing a special situation, the right or wrong being determined by the situation in its entirety, not by the rule as such. — John Dewey

Habit is the best thing for you if you're trying to write prose. — Alan Cheuse

That person, I can't remember who it was right now, who said the pen was mightier that the sword-I thnk they were wrong. I think the eraser is actually the most powerful tool. I wish there was an eraser that could erase the things a person did. And erase other people. Writing things down doesn't erase anything. What's done is done, and that really sucks. — Beverley Brenna