“Death is master of lord and clown.
Close the coffin and hammer it down.”
Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet
Source: Prince Lucifer (1887), Adam in Act IV, sc. iv; p. 111.
Act V, scene 3. Similar thought in William Shakespeare, King Henry V.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
“Death is master of lord and clown.
Close the coffin and hammer it down.”
Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet
Source: Prince Lucifer (1887), Adam in Act IV, sc. iv; p. 111.
“Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director
Mistakenly attributed to Vladimir Mayakovsky in The Political Psyche (1993) by Andrew Samuels, p. 9; mistakenly attributed to Brecht in Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter (1993) by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, p. 80; variant translation: "Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it."
First recorded in Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924; edited by William Keach (2005), Ch. 4: Futurism, p. 120): "Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes."
Disputed
“Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor
Attributed to Vladimir Mayakovsky in The Political Psyche (1993) by Andrew Samuels, p. 9; attributed to Bertolt Brecht in Paulo Freire : A Critical Encounter (1993) by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, p. 80
Variant translation: Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.
Disputed
“If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.”
Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer
"If I Had A Hammer" (1949) Though Seeger composed the music of this song the lyrics were actually written by fellow member of The Weavers, Lee Hays.
Misattributed
Context: If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.
I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land...
Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.
“Treat your past as a book that you learn from instead of a hammer that you beat yourself up about.”
Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor
citation needed
Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist
The One
Song lyrics, The One (1992)
“PHP is just a hammer. Nobody has ever gotten rich making hammers.”
Rasmus Lerdorf (1968) Danish programmer and creator of PHP
@rasmus https://twitter.com/rasmus/status/466911047044300800
“It is better to be the hammer than the nail.”
Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer
Egwene al'Vere
(15 October 1991)