“The tool that is so dull that you cannot cut yourself on it is not likely to be sharp enough to be either useful or helpful.”

— John Tukey, The Technical Tools of Statistics

The Technical Tools of Statistics. The American Statistician 34 (1). Online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/2682374

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John Tukey3

American mathematician 1915–2000

Kathy Acker book Blood and Guts in High School

Blood and Guts in High School (1978)

“Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

“That one is so sharp he will cut himself.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Silver on the Tree (1977), Chapter 7 “Afanc” (p. 98)

“To act nobly, a noble heart is not enough. It needs help from a sharp mind.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Context: To act nobly, a noble heart is not enough. It needs help from a sharp mind. Though the beginnings of ethical virtue lie in habituation, starting in our youth, and though the core of moral virtue is the right-shaping of our loves and hates, by means of praise and blame, reward and punishment, the perfection of character finally requires a certain perfection of the mind.

“Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Cambridge Thirty Years Ago.
Literary Essays, vol. I (1864-1890)

“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

movie The Dark Knight

Character Harvey Dent

“What Alvin figured out was that when you’re Making, you don’t use people like tools. You don’t wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they’re right.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 14.

“It is a common myth that idlers are incapable of working. The term “idler” is used as a pejorative by the forces of dullness and authority as they like the idea that idleness equates to evil, and they want society at large to despise the idler. The non-idler cannot understand the paradox of the working idler. He likes things to be simple: you are either working, or not working.”

Tom Hodgkinson (1968) British writer

“Idleness and Industry,” The Idler.

“When I was growing up, the pain was so sharp, it was like I’d been cut by a knife. As I get older, the pain is different, it is deep in there and stays there.”

Phan Thi Kim Phuc (1963) Child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972

"Kim Phuc, the napalm girl: 'Love is more powerful than any weapon'" in Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/kim-phuc-the-napalm-girl-love-is-more-powerful-than-any-weapon-1.2661740 (28 May 1996)

“A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.”

Washington Irving Rip Van Winkle

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
Source: "Rip Van Winkle".

“The tool that is so dull that you cannot cut yourself on it is not likely to be sharp enough to be either useful or helpful.”

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John Tukey3

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