How pen can be mightier than sword?
Answers
The pen is mightier than the sword" is a metonymic adage, coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839, indicating that communication (particularly written language), or in some interpretations, administrative power or advocacy of an independent press, is a more effective tool than direct violence.The sentence (if not the idea, which had been expressed in various earlier forms) was coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 for his play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy.The play was about Cardinal Richelieu, though in the author's words "license with dates and details ... has been, though not unsparingly, indulged". The Cardinal's line in Act II, scene II, was more fully:
True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself is 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!
The play opened at London's Covent Garden Theatre on 7 March 1839 with William Charles Macready in the lead role. Macready believed its opening night success was "unequivocal"; Queen Victoria attended a performance on 14 March.
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". By 1888 another author, Charles Sharp, feared that repeating the phrase "might sound trite and commonplace". The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, which opened in 1897, has the adage decorating an interior wall. Though 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."
Predecessors
Assyrian sage Ahiqar, who reputedly lived during the early 7th century BC, coined the first known version of this phrase. One copy of the Teachings of Ahiqar, dating to about 500 BC, states, "The word is mightier than the sword."
According to the website Trivia-Library.com, the book The People's Almanac by Irving Wallace and David Wallechinsky lists several supposed predecessors to Bulwer's phrasing.
Their first example comes from the Greek playwright Euripides, who died c. 406 BC. He is supposed to have written: "The tongue is mightier than the blade." If the People's Almanac is correct, it should be possible to source this to an extant work by Euripides; however, the quote does appear in the 1935 fictional work Claudius the God and his Wife Messalina by Robert Graves, and is thus possibly an anachronism.
Several possible precursors do appear in the Old and New Testaments, for example, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose authorship is uncertain, verse 4:12 has been translated as: "Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart."
An incident in the Babylonian Talmud refers to the Roman troops entering the synagogue classrooms. "And when the enemy entered there, these schoolchildren stabbed them with their pens [behotreihen - a type of sharp stick used with waxed tablets]. And when the enemy prevailed and caught them, they wrapped the children in their scrolls and lit them on fire.
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".
The source of the saying "The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr" attributed to him has been proven to be either fabricated, unsound or weak.
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. Thomas North, in 1557, translated Reloj de príncipes into English as Diall of Princes. 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."
Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, who died in 1602 and was personal scribe and vizier to Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar (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." 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."
Answer:
The pen is mightier than the sword
"The pen is mightier than the sword" is a proverb which celebrates the power of writing and expresses the fact that scholars are powerful with words than warriors with swords. The power of a pen is mightier than that of the sword, which means, the power of writing is stronger than the power of war, hatred, and conflict.
A sword is capable of conquering the physical but the pen can conquer the mind and the heart of people. The achievement of the pen is through enlightenment of minds and not by at force or bloodshed. The influence of a pen is long lasting but the power of the sword is short-lived. The achievement of great kings and emperors are long gone. But the writings of ancient philosophers, teachers and preachers continue live and speak to us even today.
A sword may seems strong and powerful and a pen weak and powerless. Yet, in the long run the power of the sword ends in destruction and ruins. Whereas the power of a pen yields positive values generation after generation. The sword of a king can rule only his kingdom but the pen of a writer rules the entire world. Written words are more powerful and more effective than weapons. While the power of sword ends with death, loss, and destruction, the power of a pen brings hope, inspiration, motivation and encouragement. Written words are alive, they have a life of their own. So they are able to transform the hearts of people and the society for the better.