Robert Kagan Quotes

As the saying goes, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Just because we have the best hammer, does not mean that every problem is a nail.

She live in a mindset that I could never move to

If you have a hammer, use it everywhere you can, but I do not claim that everything is fractal.

We do not see the lens through which we look.

Much public thinking follows a rut. The same thing is true in science. People get stuck and don't look in other directions.

I don't ever want to be caught up in a system of thinking I can do one thing 'cos that's just... that's just telling yourself a lie.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

We keep saying we have no other course; what we should be saying is we are not bright enough to see any other course.

You need a screwdriver for screws and a hammer for nails. Anybody that's trying to screw in a nail with a screwdriver… that ain't too smart.

Born with blue spectacles, you would think the world was blue and never be conscious of the existence of the distorting glass.

I don't think I could tell the whole truth about anything. That's a pretty heavy burden, because we all just view the world through this little piece of coke bottle.

The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth

People's belief in their own local reality-tunnels keep us all far stupider than we ought to be.

There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.

A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

There are minds constructed like the eyes of certain insects, which discern, with admirable distinctness, the most delicate lineaments and finest veins of the leaf which bears them, but are totally unable to take in the ensemble of the plant or shrub. When error has effected an entrance into such minds, it remains there impregnable, because no general view assists them in throwing off the chance impression of the moment.

WE ARE ALL TRAPPED in our own way of thinking, trapped in our own way of relating to people. We get so used to seeing the world our way that we come to think that the world is the way we see it.

Your inability to see other possibilities and your lack of vocabulary are your brain's limits, not the universe's.