“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966), Ch. 2, p. 15; although some similar statements to describe fundamental errors in human perception have been attributed to others, his expression, or slight paraphrases of it, is one of the earliest yet found to be documented in published writings, and remains among the most popular.
1940s-1960s
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Abraham Maslow34
American psychologist 1908–1970Related quotes
“If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) American psychologist
“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“When you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail.”
Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power
Alternate version: If you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail.
Of Paradise and Power, p. 26
According to Kagan, this is a variation of the proverb "When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails." (p. 25 of the same book)
“It is better to be the hammer than the nail.”
Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer
Egwene al'Vere
(15 October 1991)
“I held a nail in place and slammed it with the hammer. Best. Chore. Ever.”
Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist
Source: Immortal Beloved
Andrey Voznesensky (1933–2010) Soviet poet
"I am Goya"; translated by Stanley Kunitz, p. 3.
Antiworlds, and the Fifth Ace