Nail Quotes (8 quotes)
Chiodo scaccia chiodo, ma quattro chiodi fanno una croce.
One nail drives out another, but four nails make a cross.
One nail drives out another, but four nails make a cross.
His final comments on 16th August 1950, just a few days before his death, refer to his estimate of his own work. In Il mestiere di vivere (1947), 361. Translated as The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950 (1961), 19.
Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.
In Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), 92.
A wrench is a great tool, but don’t try to drive a nail with it.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for the want of a horse-shoe nail.
As given in Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth; As Clearly Shewn in the Preface of an Old Pennsylvania Almanack, Intitled, Poor Richard Improved (1774), 8. There are various other wordings of this proverb, including loss of the knight or message, the battle, the kingdom: “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe, the horse was lost; For want of a horse, the rider was lost; For want of a rider, the battle was lost; For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.”
I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
In The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966), 15-16. The idiom predates his use of it. Maslow recognized a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. Thus, in his own work, he chose to give up his familiar line of questions to invent new ways of answering them.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.
One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love.
From the French, “Celui-là tissera des toiles, l’autre dans la forêt par l’éclair de sa hache couchera l’arbre. L’autre, encore, forgera des clous, et il en sera quelque part qui observeront les étoiles afin d’apprendre à gouverner. Et tous cependant ne seront qu’un. Créer le navire ce n’est point tisser les toiles, forger les clous, lire les astres, mais bien donner le goût de la mer qui est un, et à la lumière duquel il n’est plus rien qui soit contradictoire mais communauté dans l’amour.” In Citadelle (1948), Sect. 75, 687. An English edition was published as “Wisdom of the Sands.” The translation in the subject quote is given the website quoteinvestigator.com which discusses how it may have been paraphrased anonymously to yield the commonly seen quote as “If you want to build a ship, don’t recruit the men to gather the wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for vast and endless sea.”
With an illness affecting the lungs, … namely phthisis, there develops rounding of the nail as a rainbow.
As quoted in Robert Taylor, White Coat Tales: Medicine's Heroes, Heritage, and Misadventures (2010), 124.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
