Shakespeare gave the line “Brevity is the soul of wit” to the long-winded Polonius - an irony that proves the point. Philosophy has a long tradition of saying much in little: the fragments of Heraclitus, the maxims of the Stoics, Zen koans, Nietzsche’s aphorisms, Wittgenstein’s numbered remarks. A short line makes the reader do some of the thinking, which is exactly the ambition of a slogan on a shirt. Brevity is also an ethic: respect for other people’s attention, and a discipline against hiding weak ideas inside long sentences. Say less. Mean more.