Did Mark Twain say "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time"?

Q: Did Mark Twain say "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time"?

No. There is no evidence Mark Twain ever wrote or spoke this line; per Quote Investigator, the Twain credit only surfaces posthumously in the 1970s. The thought traces to Blaise Pascal, whose 1657 Lettres Provinciales closes a letter, "I have made this one longer only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter." The familiar English one-liner is a much later paraphrase, not Pascal's exact words and not Twain's at all.

Who really said it

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time

Not Mark Twain — a modern paraphrase of Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal 1623–1662 · French mathematician, physicist & philosopher

Disputed Free to reuse

There is no evidence Mark Twain ever wrote or spoke this line; per Quote Investigator, the Twain credit only surfaces posthumously in the 1970s. The thought traces to Blaise Pascal, whose 1657 Lettres Provinciales closes a letter, “I have made this one longer only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.” The familiar English one-liner is a much later paraphrase, not Pascal’s exact words and not Twain’s at all.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time” Not Mark Twain. The line is a modern paraphrase of Blaise Pascal, Lettres Provinciales (1657): "I have made this one longer only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter."

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Mark Twain. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Free to use, including in commercial and paid presentations — no permission or licence needed.

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In context

Evoking the world of Blaise Pascal — French mathematician, physicist & philosopher. Theme: "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The real source

Originator: Blaise Pascal
Work: Lettres Provinciales (Letter 16)
First published: 1657 (letter dated 4 Dec 1656)
Popular credit: Mark Twain (posthumous, from 1975)

Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

Pascal’s French close to the 16th Provincial Letter (1657) — literally, “I have made this one longer only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.” The snappy modern English “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time” is a paraphrase that later drifted onto Mark Twain.

Quote Investigator: tracing the ‘shorter letter’ saying

How we verified this

The earliest known form is Blaise Pascal’s 1657 Lettres Provinciales, whose 16th letter ends with the leisure-to-make-it-shorter remark.
Quote Investigator tracks the idea being re-credited over centuries — to John Locke (1690), Benjamin Franklin (1750), Cicero, Thoreau and others — long before Twain’s name was ever attached.
Per the same investigation, Mark Twain “did not use it”; a version is pinned to him only in a 1975 newspaper piece, decades after his 1910 death.
Pascal’s original text is freely readable via Wikisource and Project Gutenberg.

Public domain

The underlying line comes from Blaise Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales, first published in 1657, with an English translation issued in London in 1658 — both centuries into the public domain. The modern English one-liner is an anonymous paraphrase carrying no separate, protectable authorship.

Fact-check

How Twain got the credit

This is a textbook “famous-name magnet” quote: a witty, universally relatable line that gets reassigned to the era’s favorite wits. It has been pinned on at least a dozen people across four centuries.

Mark Twain misattributed

No Twain letter, book, speech or notebook contains this line. Quote Investigator finds Twain “did not use it,” with a version attached to him only in a 1975 newspaper article — 65 years after his death.

Winston Churchill, Cicero, Benjamin Franklin, John Locke, Goethe, Voltaire also mis-credited

All appear as later “quotes” of the idea, but the documented chain runs back to Pascal; see the full attribution timeline.

The genuine source is Blaise Pascal’s 1657 Lettres Provinciales — “I did not have the leisure to make it shorter” — not Mark Twain.

Context

Why it resonates

The line endures because it captures a real paradox of writing: concision is harder and slower than sprawl. Editing down to the essential takes the time that a first draft skips — so a short, tight letter is often the more expensive one.

Pascal made the point as a graceful apology at the end of a long polemical letter. Over the centuries writers from Franklin to Thoreau restated it, and in the internet age it settled onto Mark Twain, whose reputation for pithy wit makes almost any clever aphorism ‘sound like him.’

Concision costs time — which is exactly the joke.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Simplicity Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: ‘shorter letter’quoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative investigation: Pascal 1657 origin, full chronology of attributions, and the finding that Twain did not use it.

Lettres Provinciales (Wikisource)en.wikisource.org

Full text of Pascal’s Provincial Letters, the work containing the original phrasing.

The Provincial Letters (Project Gutenberg)gutenberg.org

Free public-domain English translation of Pascal’s Provincial Letters.

Lettres provinciales (Wikipedia)en.wikipedia.org

Background on the work, its 1656–57 publication, and the 16th letter.

Know Your Meme: shorter-letter quoteknowyourmeme.com

Documents how the line circulates online, often mis-credited to Twain and Churchill.

The author

About Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

1623–1662 · French mathematician, physicist & philosopher

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher, a founder of probability theory and projective geometry. His Lettres Provinciales (1656–57), a series of polemical letters defending Jansenism against the Jesuits, are landmarks of French prose — and the source of the famous apology for a too-long letter. He is also known for the posthumously published Pensées.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Blaise Pascal, Les Provinciales (Lettre XVI, 1657); English tradition traced in Garson O’Toole, “If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter,” Quote Investigator, 28 Apr 2012.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-would-have-written-a-shorter-letter-but-i-did-not-have