![]() ![]() ![]() Sixty years later, Benjamin Franklin wrote the quote in a letter to the Royal Society in London regarding his experiments on electricity entitled "New Experiments and Observations on Electricity Made at Philadelphia in America" (shown below, left). But to confess the Truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy to make it shorter." In 1690, philosopher John Locke included a variation of the quote in the preface to his work "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding." The preface, entitled "The Epistle to the Readers," features and explanation for the length of the essay with this statement: "I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower Compass than it is and that some Parts of it might be contracted: The way it has been writ in, by Catches, and many long Intervals of Interruption, being apt to cause some Repetitions. Pascal (an author very famous for his felicity in comprising much in few words) excused himself wittily for the extravagant length of one of his letters, by saying, he had not time to make it shorter." Written in French the quote says, "Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." This translates to "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." SpreadĪbout 20 years later, the quote was used in the book The Art of Speaking, where it was translated to "These inventions require much wit, and application and therefore it was, that Mons. The earliest recorded use of the quote "If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter" comes from French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal's work "Lettres Provinciales" in 1657. ![]()
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