The Short and Short of It

The president who delivered history's longest inauguration speech on a frigid January day also died of pnemonia soon thereafter. To my knowledge, no one has ever been shot for deciding to spare the audience a long delivery and opt for shorter.

Consider the wisdom of the ages:

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
--Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) Lettres provinciales

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
--Henry David Thoreau

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
--Marcus T. Cicero

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.
--Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
--Nietzsche

The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit.
–F. Fenelon

No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report.
--Woodrow Wilson

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”
--Mark Twain