Quotes about hammer
page 2

Xi Murong photo
Heinrich Heine photo
Kent Hovind photo
Bill Bryson photo
Nick Cave photo

“Oh, a passing, skeptical kind of interest. I'm a hammer-and-nails kind of guy.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Cave on his interest in Eastern and nontheistic spirituality
God and religion

Carl Sandburg photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
John Steinbeck photo
Russell Brand photo
Mickey Spillane photo

“I always wanted to have Mike Mazurki play Hammer… too bad he couldn't act.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

Joseph Strutt photo
Colin Wilson photo
Reginald Heber photo

“No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!”

"Palestine"; this was altered in later editions to: "No workman’s steel, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung".
need further publication dates
Variant: No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!

Jerry Pournelle photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Mrs. George
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Menzies Campbell photo

“Under my leadership the Liberal Democrats would not be making polite interjections from the sidelines, we would be hammering on the doors of power.”

Menzies Campbell (1941) British Liberal Democrat politician and advocate

Birmingham Post, 21 January 2006

Czeslaw Milosz photo
Hans von Bülow photo
Rasmus Lerdorf photo

“PHP is just a hammer. Nobody has ever gotten rich making hammers.”

Rasmus Lerdorf (1968) Danish programmer and creator of PHP

@rasmus https://twitter.com/rasmus/status/466911047044300800

Woody Allen photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Amir Taheri photo

“Hey, would you like a date? I have a hammer!?”

Radio From Hell (March 19, 2007)

Robert Jordan photo

“It is better to guide people than try to hammer them into a line.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Morgase Trakand
(15 September 1992)

Alex Jones photo

“Bernie wants us to live under the heavenly socialist–communist system like China. We never hear the left criticize that Mao Tse-Tung killed over 80 million people—the Chinese government admits—biggest mass murder in history. That's why there's so many liberal trendy places in Austin, in Denver, in New York, in LA, and San Francisco named after Mao. And people go and love play on their iPhones and the free market and their Chinese slave goods, and they drink beer and expensive wine and giggle about how fun it is to wear red stars. You couldn't put more bad luck on you, you couldn't trash your mojo better. Wearing swastika armbands, you stupid snot-nosed crud! That live off the backs of everybody that fought Nazism and Communism. You need to have your jaws broken! Don't you worry, reality is gonna crash in on you, trash! Who lowered our defenses and brought the Republic down; oh, we're already gone! And you celebrate it like you've joined the globalists mounting America's head on the wall, your great victory! A mass rape of women across Europe. The national draft coming in for women! The families falling apart! Women degraded into nothing but sexual objects! ALL in the name of Gloria Steinem and the Central Intelligence Agency program! And a Bernie Sanders with his fake Einstein hair, and his 'I'm a man of the people!' We go out and talk to Bernie Sanders' supporters, they can hardly talk—they're like him—'Free! Free! I want free stuff!' As if the New World Order is gonna give you anything free! Oh, it's free like a piece of cheese. And a little mouse comes out and it smells it and goes to bite it and, WA BAM! Breaks your neck. But your stupider than the little mouse. You can see all the countries and all the people caught in the mouse traps, caught in the big bear traps. You know what you do? You go into a trendy shop. On some capitalist strip. And you go in and you snuggle in with that credit card that daddy put money in for the trust fund. And you put on that little fur-rimmed coat and you're all sexy with your hammer and sickle on, and your Che Guevara and, you know, shirt from Rage Against the Machine, and the whole capitalist record company system selling it to you, and you go out on the street and you walk into McDonald's and you have yourself a double latte, oh yeah. Pathetic! Scum! Oh, how you'll burn in the camps, later. Wishing you had done something; I mean, you are the ultimate chumps, the ultimate buffoons, the ultimate schmucks!… But the public had so much freedom! They were so wealthy, even our poorest, they had no idea that what they were replacing it with was abject slavery.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Sanders Supporters are Pathetic Scum" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooNxJnf_UAI, February 2016

Alan Charles Kors photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo
Nick Cave photo

“Here is the hammer, that build the scaffold, and built the box…”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), A Box for Black Paul

Amit Chaudhuri photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Mordecai Richler photo
John Buchan photo
Bill Whittle photo

“Treat your past as a book that you learn from instead of a hammer that you beat yourself up about.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

citation needed

Anton Chekhov photo
Elton John photo

“In the instant that you love someone,
In the second that the hammer hits,
Reality runs up your spine,
And the pieces finally fit.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

The One
Song lyrics, The One (1992)

Jeremy Clarkson photo
Hilaire Belloc photo

“[M]an knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

The "thing" which pursues us, we subsequently learn, is either "a Money-Devil" or "some appetite or lust" and "the advice is given to all in youth that they must make up their minds which of the two sorts of exercise they would choose, and the first [i.e. pursuit by a Money-Devil] is commonly praised and thought worthy; the second blamed." (p. 32)
Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), pp. 31–2

Fred Dibnah photo

“Steam engines don't answer back. You can belt them with a hammer and they say nowt.”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

Antoni Tàpies photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“The Working Man as yet sought only to know his craft; and educated himself sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, and in fit relation to the persons given: a course of education, then as now and ever, really opulent in manful culture and instruction to him; teaching him many solid virtues, and most indubitably useful knowledges; developing in him valuable faculties not a few both to do and to endure,—among which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing he had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn from spoken or written utterances, was not bargained for; the grammar of Nature, which he learned from his mother, being still amply sufficient for him. This was, as it still is, the grand education of the Working Man. As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading and speaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times that grammar, if needful, was by no means the one thing needful, or the chief thing. By far the chief thing needful, and indeed the one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him the feeling and the practice of reverence to God and to men; that in his life's core there should dwell, spoken or silent, a ray of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies;—not so much that he should possess the art of speech, as that he should have something to speak!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Jesse Ventura photo
Rachel Maddow photo
Carl Maria von Weber photo
Neil deGrasse Tyson photo

“If you start wielding a hammer, then all your problems look like nails. And maybe they’re not. Maybe it's more subtle than that. And so your toolkit has to be able to morph into what is necessary for what it is that you confront at that moment.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

At an interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy on January 29th, 2010.
2010s
Variant: If you start wielding a hammer, then all your problems look like nails. And maybe they’re not. Maybe it's more subtle than that. And so your toolkit has to be able to morph into what is necessary for what it is that you confront at that moment.

Joe Biden photo
Lil Wayne photo

“I got a scope on the barrel thats a hammer with a camera”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Bottles and Rockin J's Game Featuring DJ Khaled, Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross, Fabolous, Lil Wayne, and Teyana Taylor
Official Mix tapes, Guest appearances

Rosa Luxemburg photo
Colley Cibber photo

“With clink of hammers closing rivets up.”

Act V, scene 3. Similar thought in William Shakespeare, King Henry V.
Richard III (altered) (1700)

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) American psychologist

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

Jello Biafra photo
Taliesin photo
Bob Dylan photo
Walter Benjamin photo

“Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult. … An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt.”

Der Kapitalismus ist vermutlich der erste Fall eines nicht entsühnenden, sondern verschuldenden Kultus. ... Ein ungeheures Schuldbewußtsein das sich nicht zu entsühnen weiß, greift zum Kultus, um in ihm diese Schuld nicht zu sühnen, sondern universal zu machen, dem Bewußtsein sie einzuhämmern und endlich und vor allem den Gott selbst in diese Schuld einzubegreifen.
Translated by Chad Kautzer in The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers (2005), p. 259
Capitalism as Religion (1921)

Will Rogers photo

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Daily Telegram #1230, Congress Session, Rogers Says, Is Like Baby Getting A Hammer (4 July 1930)
Daily telegrams

Ray Harryhausen photo
Anthony Trollope photo
Henry Van Dyke photo
Gustav Stresemann photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Rufus Wainwright photo

“And you will believe in love
And all that it's supposed to be
But just until the fish start to smell
And you're struck down by a hammer.”

Rufus Wainwright (1973) American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer

April Fool's
Song lyrics, Rufus Wainwright (1998)

John Byrne photo
Benoît Mandelbrot photo

“You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 262
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

John Fante photo
Patton Oswalt photo

“The angry "@" tweets from my hammer toed followers opened my eyes. "Pedo-phobe" shaming hurts us all. I am a PROUD pedophile!”

Patton Oswalt (1969) stand-up comedian

9 July 2013 tweet https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/status/354640013004259328 on Twitter ( archived http://archive.is/pHDAR)

Horace Mann photo

“A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering cold iron.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

As quoted in The Eclectic Magazine Vol. VII, (January - June 1868)
Variants:
The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
As quoted in School Arts (1935) by Art Study and Teaching Periodicals, p. 91
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on a cold iron.
As quoted in Making Minds Less Well Educated Than Our Own (2004) by Roger C. Schank, p. 151

Kate Bush photo

“Hammer Horror, Hammer Horror,
Won't leave me alone.
The first time in my life,
I leave the lights on
To ease my soul.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Jack McDevitt photo

“The creative act requires both will and intelligence. Breaking things is easy. You only need a hammer.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 41 (p. 383)

Mickey Spillane photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The user of the electric light -- or a hammer, or a language, or a book -- is the content. As such, there is a total metamorphosis of the user by the interface. It is the metamorphosis that I consider the message.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Edward T. Hall, 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 397
1970s

Pete Seeger photo

“If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

"If I Had A Hammer" (1949) Though Seeger composed the music of this song the lyrics were actually written by fellow member of The Weavers, Lee Hays.
Misattributed
Context: If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.
I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land...
Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

“Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”

Abraham Kaplan (1918–1993) American philosopher

Source: "The Conduct of Inquiry", p. 28.
Context: In addition to the social pressures from the scientific community there is also at work a very human trait of individual scientist. I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled.

Pete Seeger photo

“Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

"If I Had A Hammer" (1949) Though Seeger composed the music of this song the lyrics were actually written by fellow member of The Weavers, Lee Hays.
Misattributed
Context: If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.
I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land...
Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

R. A. Lafferty photo

“Put away those damned sophisticated tools and get my stone hammers. That's when I build the good stuff.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 8, Hondstarfer of Valhal, speaking of his work as a design engineer.
Context: "I'm doing pretty good. I'm a seminal genius, they say, and I have the most sophisticated tools ever devised to work with. And I do build some good things for them. I'm quite successful. I'll tell you something, though. In the daytime, with all those sophisticated tools, and particularly if someone's watching me, I just stall around. But at night — "
"Ah, at night! What do you do then, Hondstarfer?"
"Put away those damned sophisticated tools and get my stone hammers. That's when I build the good stuff. Don't give me away, though, Roadstrum.

Rudolf Rocker photo

“For two decades the supporters of Bolshevism have been hammering it into the masses that dictatorship is a vital necessity for the defense of the so-called proletarian interests”

Rudolf Rocker (1873–1958) anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist

The Tragedy of Spain (1937)
Context: For two decades the supporters of Bolshevism have been hammering it into the masses that dictatorship is a vital necessity for the defense of the so-called proletarian interests against the assaults of counter-revolution and for paving the way for Socialism. They have not advanced the cause of Socialism by this propaganda, but have merely smoothed the way for Fascism in Italy, Germany and Austria by causing millions of people to forget that dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation. In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people. …
What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants.

Baba Hari Dass photo

“The mind is the main instrument to gain enlightenment, but enlightenment is only reached when the mind stops. Q: How can we stop the mind? A: Not hitting it with a hammer. Stop the mind by the mind”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Silence Speaks, from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, 1977
Context: Q: Can intellect aid understanding? A: It helps in the beginning but cannot give full enlightenment. The mind is the main instrument to gain enlightenment, but enlightenment is only reached when the mind stops. Q: How can we stop the mind? A: Not hitting it with a hammer. Stop the mind by the mind. (p.31)

“A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, The Scarlet Ruse (1973)
Context: Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?

Jack Kirby photo
Charles Stross photo
Samantha Bee photo

“As long as you want to keep playing whack-a-mole from hell, it is my solemn promise that I will keep picking up the metaphorical hammer to slam you back down and remind you that you have not yet done anything to earn our forgiveness. So take your millions of dollars and pay a therapist to care about how tough it’s been to get caught being an abuser because honestly, I don’t give a shit.”

Samantha Bee (1969) Canadian comedic actress and author

Full Frontal, May 9, 2018, as quoted in "Samantha Bee Checks in With #MeToo, This Time With Zero F***s Left to Give for These Men" https://www.themarysue.com/samantha-bee-schneiderman-eff-off/, by Vivian Kane, The Mary Sue, May 10th, 2018

Lil Wayne photo

“Hammer in the Louie Duff, take a nigga bitch, she gave me brain till I knew enough.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Oh Let’s Do It
Official Mix tapes, No Ceilings (2009)

Jane Austen photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Jason Statham photo
Annie Besant photo
Hank Aaron photo
James Gleick photo

“Hammer a piece of cold iron for a considerable time; you will unite its parts and diminish its bulk, and then it will appear heavier when put into the balance.”

John Rey (1583–1645) French chemist

Art. XI. A Translation of Rey's Essays on the Calcination of Metals, &c. (1822), Essay XV. Air dimishes in weight in three ways. The balance is deceitful, the means of remedying that.

Baba Hari Dass photo

“How can we stop the mind? Not hitting it with a hammer. Stop the mind by the mind.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Silence Speaks, from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass (1977), p.31

Adolf Hitler photo

“The hammer will once more become the symbol of the German worker and the sickle the sign of the German peasant,...”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: May Day Speech at Tempelhof Air Field, Berlin http://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Adolf%20Hitler%20-%20Collection%20of%20Speeches%20-%201922-1945.pdf (1 May 1934), Adolf Hitler: Collection of Speeches 1922-1945, ReichsMilitariaCom; 1st edition (2016), p. 184