Can writers change the world?

The pen is mightier than the sword.
Words change the world. Every politician's speech is put together by writers. Every law, every great statement, every great idea, every song, thought, script and scripture is written. Words have great power, so writers can change the world.

Yes, writers can certainly change the world. For hundreds of years we were the influencers of culture and civilization and even human thought, (Shakespeare is credited with inventing the inner monologue both as a literary device and popularizing it as a human thought process) though we have taken a more modest place after the emergence of sciences. Great writers can create social change which in turn can change a person, a people, a nation, and a planet! Don't stop writing, especially if you believe that one of your ideas can change the world!

Everyone changes the world to some degree. Today everyone is a writer but writers that are read have a greater oportunity than most. They also have the advantage that what they write lives on independently of them. The spark they light may start a fire which can indeed change the world.

Writers can change the world. For example, during the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called "Common Sense" which mocked the British king AND made having a king seem outdated and stupid. It had a pretty major role in firing up the colonists, because it was simple to read and accessible to those who weren't very literate. The pamphlet alone lead to riots against the king and therefore had a pretty large effect on the war. The war that ,by the way, created the most powerful, wealthy country ever to exist. And remember, it was only a pamphlet. So yes writers can and do change the world. It's happening right now too. Don't think I'm crediting the entire role to the pamphlet though, there were many other factors as well. I just thought it was a good example. I hope this answered your question. :)

Definitely, writers have as important role as the rest can play. Since a written knowledge or piece of information could reach huge audience and also most likely last for generations. Considering the change leaders and musicians bring about may last for a relatively shorter period unless of-course they write their tribute or some other writers wrote it for them; at least historian(still a type of writer). But hey scientists ... they are all writers the basic procedures of science dictate that all scientific result be hypothesized, tested and published.

Hence, scientists will be the ones who could mostly change the world or better worse, and writers also have their part as well.

Any forward thinking person with a creative mind can change the world. And that definitely includes writers.

Writers can contribute to change the world.

For a writer to change the world, there must be somebody at the other side of the book, reading it, and the truth is that the bulk of the world does not read! Most of the human beings will get to their graves without having opened by their will the pages of a single book (or switched on their e-reader).

In addition, even among those who read, a lot of them do it only to confirm their own stiff ideas, and will reject aggressively anything that questions them ("Me no likes this idea! Me throws book against wall!").

So the possibility of communication is very limited. That said, the big changes come from minorities, so maybe this or that great man enters in contact with this or that idea, has an aha moment, and away we go, so... Something does not have to be massive to be important, and reading is a very solitary, one-on-one activity.

But writers have a strong disadvantage in relation to musicians, for example. Wanting to read a book is a voluntary act. If people say I hate that book or I hate that author, there is nothing the writer can do. Music, on the contrary, can take you by surprise, ears cannot be closed, so maybe you can listen to stuff that, to your surprise, you happen to like and it changes your views...

The writer can change the world because the write they study for and the can get ride of what the written but they can't get ride of there image of being a famous person they will still be there... But no matter how and when they will get the writer change.

There are so many books that have changed my life, so I truly think that writers can change the world. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin caused so much conflict that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe he said "So here's the little lady who started this war." Clearly, she didn't actually cause the war, but she was able to get the average white Northerner to take up the anti-slavery cause.