Maslow Hammer Quote

Factual Questions
1

I’m trying to nail down the actual text of the famous quote by Abraham Maslow about hammers and nails. Unfortunately my Bartletts is at home. A short web search has come up with:

“To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”

“To the man who only has a hammer in the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail.”

"When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. "

“If your only tool is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

“When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.”

Ahh, the internet.

Anyone have the straight dope?

2

It is:

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.

-Maslow

3

You rang?

4

tc, that was my original thought, and is by far the most elegant of the above. Mind my asking your source? I know, I’m pushing it.

5

Must be true. My dad always used to use a hammer to drive screws. He said the slot was only for removing them.

6

You won’t like it, but I’ll tell you. I couldn’t confirm which of the quotes was correct so I went to the Maslow Reading Room: http://www.nidus.org/p3.html
and read ‘Politics 3’ to see if I could catch a whiff of the way he wrote and therefore thought.

Then I came back and re-read the possibilities. The one I picked was the only one he could have written. He writes the way I wish I could.

Then I went to: http://www.aphorismsgalore.com/author/Abraham_Maslow.html
and there it was.

I realize that solution might not sound entirely believable to you, but you can do it yourself and obtain the same result.