Every Fool their own Tool

The exact origin is disputed, but the phrase belongs to a long lineage of "fool and tool" proverbs in English. A close relative — "a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client" — appeared in print as early as 1814 in Henry Kett's The Flowers of Wit. The modern software variant, "a fool with a tool is still a fool," circulated widely in the 1980s and is often attributed to software engineer Grady Booch, though that attribution is contested. The "every fool their own tool" phrasing gained traction in software development circles in the 1990s and 2000s.