“The pen is mightier than the sword.” First written by novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 in the historical play ‘Richelieu,’ it has an ancient lineage dating to the Roman Cicero who wrote in De Officiis in 44 BC, cedant arma togae, which roughly translates as ‘arms give way to persuasion.’
There are those, however, who feel that this is an overstatement, with some wag at some point in time who said that ‘anyone who says the pen is mightier than the sword has never come face to face with a gun.
Swords, knives, guns, and other weapons are admittedly mighty. They have the ability to destroy in an instant. But, the pen can do what no weapon can. It can create. It can transform a life for the better. Now, the pen wielded for evil can also destroy, but that’s beside the point. The fact is that words can change the world into something better. Guns and swords can’t.
I learned this from my own experience. When I served as American ambassador to the Republic of Zimbabwe, one of my assigned tasks was to reach out to the youth of that troubled country and encourage them to dream of and work toward a better world. I went about this in a number of ways, but one way in particular was a series of essays on our embassy’s blog site, which were copied by many of the local newspapers and run as opinion pieces.
My public diplomacy staff decided to take some of the best of these and publish them in a book which we then distributed to youth groups throughout Zimbabwe. After a very public book launch where I autographed copies for the more than one hundred people who attended, word got out and my embassy began receiving more requests for the book than we anticipated.
In a month, we went through three print runs and were encouraged to issue it in the two indigenous languages of the country (Shona and Ndebele) in addition to English. Demand skyrocketed.
More importantly, though, I began to get emails and letters from people thanking me for changing their lives. One lady who lived in one of the provinces distant from the capital, informed me that her son, who had been a borderline delinquent, skipping school and getting into trouble, after reading the book completely turned his life around.
That endorsement alone would be enough to convince me of the validity of the saying ‘the pen is mightier than the sword.’ A book published in 2011 impacted the lives of hundreds if not thousands of young Zimbabweans. On October 3, 2024, I received a message on my Facebook account from a Zimbabwean who received one of my books in 2011. Here are some excerpts from that message.
“I am thrilled by your present to me in the form of a book titled ‘Where you go matters more than where (you) come from.’ The writer went on to say, ‘The book gives encouragement and hope to someone to up their lives despite a bleak upbringing (or) background. It stirs the zeal to do more.”
To have what you write impacting someone’s life after thirteen years is beyond inspiring and is proof positive that if you desire to truly have a positive impact on the world, it can be done not with force or coercion, but with gentle persuasion and the proper word written at just the right time. | NWI
