The Phantom Tollbooth

Book by Norton Juster. Milo is a bored child... for him, everything sucks until a purple tollbooth arrives mysteriously.

Milo drives through in his toy car, and discovers a magical land. He is befriended by Tock the dog (and timekeeper), meets a humbug and discovers it's hard to swim back from conclusions.

This is important reading for budding SciFi fans and Illuminati, along with Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time.

Milo's weapon was a pencil.

The wizard awarded it to him because he poked holes in the wizards logic and pointed out that the wizard, who publicly believed that he could never agree with his buddy, in fact agreed to disagree with his buddy. By aligning himself at a pole of negativity, he became out of balance. He showed the wizard the errors of his ways, and offered a different perspective.

The wizard was pleased by this demonstration, and in reward gave Milo the most powerful weapon of all.

...A pencil.

Used wisely, the wizard told Milo that with it he would have all the power he ever needed to do or defeat anything in the world.

His weapons were words, and numbers.

Watching this movie, being a hacker, was one of the most influential moments in my life.