Your A Tool Quotes

What I don't like about the way the media portrays religion is that they seem to weaponize it and use it as a tool to divide people. ~ Zach Anner

I wanted a personal-finance tool for people who didn't want to be accountants: something you could set up in ten minutes and spend less than five minutes a week on. Mint is now that tool. ~ Aaron Patzer

She imagined Jack standing among the bins of nails and tool belts and the ranks of crowbars, unspoken to beyond the ordinary courtesies, seeming unaware of their awareness of him, watching flickering television in that cave full of the smells of leather and wood and oily metal, idle among all those implements of force and purpose, citified among the steel-toed boots and the work shirts. An odd place for a man to loiter who was so alive to embarrassment, so predisposed to sensing even the thought of rebuke. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Songwriting helps me sort out my personal problems. With acting, you're just a tool for someone's ideas. ~ Gary Kemp

If your a fly, fly away ~ Connor Smith

People who think of children's nudity as a tool don't need freedom of expression. ~ Agnes Chan

Erik had long recognized that technology was a tool. Even the tech that created the Drasin. One didn't get angry at a tool. One did not fear a tool. Emotions were reserved for the person handling the tool. ~ Evan Currie

A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power. ~ Charles Babbage

Being a good observer is a great tool to have as a writer, just taking the world in. ~ Lauren Conrad

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

The Baby Name book can be a very dangerous tool in the hands of a prolific author. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

The antidote to fear is trust, and we all have a desire to find something to trust in an uncertain world. Fear and trust are powerful forces, and while they are not opposites, exactly, trust is the best tool for driving out fear. ~ Ed Catmull

Everything you want is cheap or free. If you went to a venture capitalist and said: "I need money to buy tools." You flunked the IQ test, I mean every tool that you need is free! ~ Guy Kawasaki

Jeremy Bentham argued that 'even in the best of times the great mass of citizens will most probably possess few resources other than their daily labour and, consequently, be always near indigence'. As long as working man was near indigence, hunger would remain an effective tool to goad him to labour. Bentham argued that an important task of government was to ensure conditions of deprivation, thereby guaranteeing that hunger would [be a constant motivation to work]. ~ Linda McQuaig

I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more. ~ Jamie Zawinski

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

I'd literally rather hang out at the T.G.I. Friday's in New Jersey than tool around at a place that sells $40 cheeseburgers. ~ Patrick Carney

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

Language as a Prison

The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanish colonists arrived, contrary to what many of those colonists subsequently claimed. However, it was a language that some theorists believe was mainly used as a mnemonic device for epic poems. There was simply no need for a European-style written language in a decentralized land of small seaside fishing villages that were largely self-sufficient.

One theory regarding language is that it is primarily a useful tool born out of a need for control. In this theory written language was needed once top-down administration of small towns and villages came into being. Once there were bosses there arose a need for written language. The rise of the great metropolises of Ur and Babylon made a common written language an absolute necessity - but it was only a tool for the administrators. Administrators and rulers needed to keep records and know names - who had rented which plot of land, how many crops did they sell, how many fish did they catch, how many children do they have, how many water buffalo? More important, how much then do they owe me? In this account of the rise of written language, naming and accounting seem to be language's primary "civilizing" function. Language and number are also handy for keeping track of the movement of heavenly bodies, crop yields, and flood cycles. Naturally, a version of local oral languages was eventually translated into symbols as well, and nonadmi ~ David Byrne

The law is not abstract, impartially arbitrating between conflicting social classes; it is a tool in the hands of those who govern. ~ Josephine Herbst

Let us once again be clear: if we oppose violence, then we must oppose all forms of policing. If we oppose violence, then we must call for an end to war, an end to occupation. We must oppose sexual assault, and prisons as institutions that wield it as a strategic tool. If we abhor violence to bodies, families, and communities, then we should abhor all these systems and call for their immediate abolition. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said so perfectly in his Atlantic piece "Nonviolence as Compliance," "When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con."

In Support of Baltimore; or, Smashing Police Cars Is Logical Political Strategy ~ Benji Hart

Imagine early hominid life as a tense balance of power between the alpha (and an ally or two) and the larger set of males who are shut out of power. Then arm everyone with spears. The balance of power is likely to shift when physical strength no longer decides the outcome of every fight. That's essentially what happened, Boehm suggests, as our ancestors developed better weapons for hunting and butchering beginning around five hundred thousand years ago, when the archaeological record begins to show a flowering of tool and weapon types.30 Once early humans had developed spears, anyone could kill a bullying alpha male. And if you add the ability to communicate with language, and note that every human society uses language to gossip about moral violations,31 then it becomes easy to see how early humans developed the ability to unite in order to shame, ostracize, or kill anyone whose behavior threatened or simply annoyed the rest of the group. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Freedom and wildness, that which we were born into, is a grand mystery and miracle that creates a openness reserved not for barring us in but for keeping us out of cages. It is our ability to find the truth that has been a survival tool for our species both individually and corporately. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

We have to come together, worldwide, and 'think.' We have a tool - the internet - to let us do that. Let's use it wisely. ~ Jimmy Wales

Memory becomes not a faculty but a coconspirator, a tool for constructing the self that we show the world. ~ David Carr

Every major communication tool on the Internet has spam and abuse problems. All email services, blogging services and social networks have to dedicate a significant amount of resources and time to fighting abuse and protecting their users. ~ Evan Williams

Fashion is a tool ... to compete in life outside the home. People like you better, without knowing why, because people always react well to a person they like the looks of. ~ Mary Quant

Fragrance is an aspiration. A goal. Not just a tool of seduction but of power and status. ~ Kathleen Tessaro

A joyless Catholic is the devil's best tool. A joyful Catholic is God's greatest instrument. ~ Scott Hahn

The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal ~ Paul Gauguin

A fool with a tool is still a fool. ~ Abraham Verghese

There is a deep gap between our thinking about statistics and our thinking about individual cases. Statistical results with a causal interpretation have a stronger effect on our thinking than noncausal information. But even compelling causal statistics will not change long-held beliefs or beliefs rooted in personal experience. On the other hand, surprising individual cases have a powerful impact and are a more effective tool for teaching psychology because the incongruity must be resolved and embedded in a causal story. ~ Daniel Kahneman

My faith is a tool I employ, a metaphorical context I find apt, but it is inert until placed in a hand that needs it. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Jon Stone spoke thirteen languages and was fluent in six, French being one. He spoke it so well the girls thought he was a native Parisian pretending to be an American. This ability to blend with the natives was a valuable tool when Jon plied his trade. Jon eased from the bed. Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors lined the back of his house, ten-foot-tall, custom-designed monsters so Jon could Zen on the view. Golden lights glittered to the horizon, ruby flashes marked ghetto-bird prowlers, jets descending toward LAX were strung like pearls across a tuxedo black sky. The doors were heavy as trucks, but silent as silk when they slid open. Jon stepped out and went to the pool. Pike was a silhouette cutout, backlit by the city as Jon swaggered close. "What ~ Robert Crais

You must understand that violence in a movie is only a tool. If it's used badly, it will be horrible. If it's used correctly, it can be very interesting. But, essentially, it's just a tool. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people. ~ Kathryn Bigelow

We realized we weren't really using Odeo, we weren't investing our own time creating podcasts. We were building a tool that was a great idea for some other people. That's a dangerous way to go because if you don't actually use it yourself and love it, then you aren't going to be as fully invested in it from the start. That's what leads you to doing side projects. ~ Biz Stone

As a writer, the main skill you need is curiosity. As a reader, the main tool you need is open-mindedness. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

A list of equipment purchased under MKULTRA Subproject 49 includes "I shock stimulator." Whether the shock stimulator was used as a conditioning tool, to check for hypnotic resistance to pain, or to determine whether a hypnotic subject can perform under stress, is unknown. ~ Colin A. Ross

I believe photography is a tool to express our positive assessment of the world. A tool to acquire ultimate happiness and belief. ~ Ansel Adams

I don't understand why one should be one thing or the other. Writing, to me, is writing is writing. It should be a flexible tool. Whatever skills I have, have to work for me; I won't be dictated by them. ~ Sonya Hartnett

For throughout history, the synthesizing impulse has proved a powerful even world-changing, tool for understanding the universe, capable of penetrating the intricate,contradictory web of surface phenomena to reveal the universal,unified cosmos beneath
that fundamental,unchanging phenomenon we call truth. ~ Gerard Helferich

All prayer essentially is a chiropractic tool for the soul, a way of popping things into alignment ~ Gary Jansen

A market economy is a tool - a valuable and effective tool - for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavour. It's a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market. ~ Michael Sandel

I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day. ~ Sherry Turkle

Difficulties can be a valuable tool in our pursuit of perfection. Adversity need have no necessary connection with failure. ~ Marvin J. Ashton

Money is only a tool for you to experience the things you love in life. When you think about the things you can do with money, you will feel much more love and joy than when you think only of money. Imagine being with what you love, doing what you love, and having the things you love, because you will then feel far more love than you will if you only think about money. ~ Rhonda Byrne

Fear is a survival tool not a handicap. ~ Garrison Wynn