"The pen is mightier than the sword" is an expression indicating that the written word is more effective than violence as a means of social or political change. This sentiment has been expressed with metaphorical contrasts of writing implements and weapons for thousands of years. The specific wording that "the pen is mightier than the sword" was first used by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839.
Under some interpretations, written communication can refer to administrative power or an independent news media.
The exact sentence was coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 for his play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy . [1] [2] The play was about Cardinal Richelieu, though in the author's words "license with dates and details ... has been, though not unsparingly, indulged". [1] The Cardinal's line in Act II, scene II, was more fully: [3]
True,—This!
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand!— itself a nothing!—
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars—and to strike
The loud earth breathless!—Take away the sword—States can be saved without it! [4]
The play opened at London's Covent Garden Theatre on 7 March 1839 with William Charles Macready in the lead role. [5] Macready believed its opening night success was "unequivocal"; Queen Victoria attended a performance on 14 March. [5]
In 1870, literary critic Edward Sherman Gould wrote that Bulwer "had the good fortune to do, what few men can hope to do: he wrote a line that is likely to live for ages". [2] By 1888 another author, Charles Sharp, feared that repeating the phrase "might sound trite and commonplace". [6] The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, which opened in 1897, has the adage decorating an interior wall. [7] [8] Although Bulwer's phrasing was novel, the idea of communication surpassing violence in efficacy had numerous predecessors.
The saying quickly gained currency, says Susan Ratcliffe, associate editor of the Oxford Quotations Dictionaries. "By the 1840s it was a commonplace." [9]
Assyrian sage Ahiqar, who reputedly lived during the early 7th century BCE, coined the first known version of this phrase. One copy of the Teachings of Ahiqar, dating to about 500 BCE, states, "The word is mightier than the sword." [10]
According to the website Trivia Library, [12] the book The People's Almanac [11] provides another very early example from Greek playwright Euripides, who died c. 406 BCE. He is supposed to have written: "The tongue is mightier than the blade." [12] [a]
The Islamic prophet Muhammad is quoted, in a saying narrated by 'Abdullah ibn Amr: "There will be a tribulation that will wipe out the Arabs in which those killed on both sides are in the Hellfire. In that time the spoken word will be stronger than the sword". [14]
Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, who died in 1602 and was personal scribe and vizier to Akbar the Great, wrote of a gentleman put in charge of a fiefdom having "been promoted from the pen to the sword and taken his place among those who join the sword to the pen, and are masters both of peace and war." [15] [17] Syad Muhammad Latif, in his 1896 history of Agra, quoted King Abdullah of Bokhara (Abdullah-Khan II), who died in 1598, as saying that "He was more afraid of Abu'l-Fazl's pen than of Akbar's sword." [18]
In contrast, Abu Tammam's Ode on the Conquest of Amorium poem intro: "The sword is the truest news [in comparison with] books... In its sharpness, the boundary between seriousness and play". [19]
In 1529, Antonio de Guevara, in Reloj de príncipes, compared a pen to a lance, books to arms, and a life of studying to a life of war. [20] [21] Thomas North, in 1557, translated Reloj de príncipes into English as Diall of Princes. [21] The analogy would appear in again in 1582, in George Whetstone's An Heptameron of Civil Discourses: "The dashe of a Pen, is more greeuous than the counterbuse of a Launce." [22] [b]
Netizens have suggested that a 1571 edition of Erasmus' Institution of a Christian Prince contains the words "There is no sworde to bee feared more than the Learned pen", [23] [24] but this is not evident from modern translations [25] and this could be merely a spurious quotation.
William Shakespeare in 1600, in his play Hamlet Act 2, scene II, wrote: "... many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills." [12] [26]
Robert Burton, in 1621, in The Anatomy of Melancholy , stated: "It is an old saying, 'A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword': and many men are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrilous and bitter jest, a libel, a pasquil, satire, apologue, epigram, stage-play or the like, as with any misfortune whatsoever." [27] After listing several historical examples he concludes: "Hinc quam sit calamus saevior ense patet", [27] which translates as "From this it is clear how much more cruel the pen may be than the sword." [12]
The French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), known to history for his military conquests, also left this oft-quoted remark: "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets." He also said: "There are only two powers in the world, sabre and mind; at the end, sabre is always defeated by mind." ("Il n'y a que deux puissances au monde, le sabre et l'esprit : à la longue, le sabre est toujours vaincu par l'esprit.").
Thomas Jefferson, on 19 June 1792, ended a letter to Thomas Paine with: "Go on then in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword: shew that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man, and be assured that it has not a more sincere votary nor you a more ardent well-wisher than Y[ou]rs. &c. Thomas Jefferson" [12] [28]
Published in 1830, by Joseph Smith, an account in the Book of Mormon related, "The word had a greater tendency to lead the people to do that which was just; yea, it had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword". [29]
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton,, was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866.
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Cardinal Richelieu is a 1935 American historical film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring George Arliss, Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold and Cesar Romero. It was based on the 1839 play Richelieu by Edward Bulwer-Lytton depicting the life of the great seventeenth century French statesman Cardinal Richelieu and his dealings with Louis XIII.
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Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy is an 1839 historical play by the British writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It portrays the life of the Seventeenth Century French statesman Cardinal Richelieu. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on 7 March 1839. The original cast featured William Macready as Richelieu, Edward William Elton as Louis XIII, James Prescott Warde as Baradas, Frederick Vining as Sieur De Beringhen, Samuel Phelps as Joseph, George John Bennett as Huguet, Henry Howe as Francois and Helena Faucit as Julie De Mortemar.
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