Pen is mightier than the sword

English novelist and dramatist Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) uttered the wise words "The pen is mightier than the sword" in 1839 for his play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy:



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!

Indeed, the opposite often happen to states - or more correctly speaking, statesmen. Currently the British Labour Party, is feeling the sharp end of the newspaper quills. The British leaders should have taken in the wise words from an old enemy of theirs, Napoleon Bonaparte: "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets."

Time will tell how well US journalists have been sharpening their words against the blunt ideas of the elected. Of course, you can follow the mood on the blogs but they still have an awful long way to go to reach the edge that newspapers still swing. And to think, the end of newspapers and, indeed, the end of the book has been predicted since the dawn of the personal computer. Alas, thanks to their online presence, newspapers actually have more readers than ever before (even though they sell printed newspapers, thankfully).

Books are doing pretty well too. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling became the world's first billionaire writer. She sold more than three times as many books as the next two, Enid Blyton and Theodor Seuss Geise (Dr Seuss), who have an estimated 100 million sales each. And those numbers ain't too bad either. Unless you are the villian in the story.

"Bloodletter Quill", the shown art work, is by Dan Scot, a master of the color quill.