Quotation by Thomas Carlyle

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A Diary eds. H. Allingham and D. Radford (1907)Chartism (1839)Collected Letters Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (1970-1981)Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1839)

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Man is a tool-using animal.... Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), Scottish essayist, historian. Sartor Resartus, bk. 1, ch. 5 (1833-1834).

Benjamin Franklin is also cited as defining man as a tool-making animal, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, entry, April 7, 1778.

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