Quote #0
People have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
About This Quote
The line appears in Thoreau’s book "Walden" (1854) during a discussion of how technological and economic developments reshape everyday life. He illustrates the idea with early technologies and practices such as farming and permanent housing, arguing that people can end up organized around maintaining and serving these systems rather than using them freely.
Interpretation
Thoreau is warning that tools and the ways of life built around them can reverse the intended relationship: instead of tools serving human needs, humans adapt their lives to the demands of the tools, routines, and institutions those tools create.
Extended Quotation
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
Variations
People have become the tools of their tools.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Misattributions
- Winston Churchill
- Marshall McLuhan
Source
Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854).
