Ben Franklin Virtues Quotes

Ben Franklin may have discovered electricity- but it is the man who invented the meter who made the money. ~ Earl Warren

The names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1.Temperance. Eat not do dullness; drink not to elevation.
2.Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3.Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4.Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5.Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6.Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7.Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8.Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9.Moderation. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10.Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloths, or habitation.
11.Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12.Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13.Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Ben Franklin said:
"Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy wealthy and wise"
Lately I have read the advice given to William Randolph Hearst, when a young man, by his father:
"Go downtown at noon and rob the other fellows of what they have made during the morning. ~ E. Haldeman-Julius

As Ben Franklin said, "Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75." I ~ Steve Kamb

He does not possess wealth; it possesses him. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He undid the lock and pulled open the cover to reveal a large stack of envelopes, each one labeled with a different name: Franklin Hobart, Brian Yancey, Everett Singer, Larry Steczynski…it was this last one he grabbed and pulled open, emptying its contents into his wallet and pockets.
"Larry Steczynski?" I asked incredulously.
Sage smiled. "You don't think it suits me?"
"Oh, I think you suits you perfectly. How many aliases do you have?"
"I'm a bit of a collector."
I placed a hand on his wrist, stopping him as he transferred something into his wallet. "Does Larry Steczynski carry a black AmEx?"
"He might."
"My mom doesn't even carry a black AmEx."
"Apparently your mom doesn't move in the same circles as Larry Steczynski."
"Sage," Ben called from across the room. He had knelt down to gaze closely at a sculpted figurine that sat on an end table, and his voice broke with awe. "This...this is a real Michelangelo, isn't it?"
"Yeah, yeah it is."
"But it's a Michelangelo!"
"Yep."
"And that painting," Ben said, nodding to a piece on the wall featuring a sketch of what looked like a somewhat cherubic version of Sage himself. "That's a real Rubens?"
"It is."
"It looks like you."
"Strong genetics in the family line," Sage explained. ~ Hilary Duff

I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate. ~ Ben Bernanke

Purple light passed over the paper, but nothing happened.
"Next!" Amy said. She was sure the man in black was going to burst in on them any second.
"Whoa!" Dan said.
Amy gripped his arm. "You found it?"
"No, but look! This whole essay - 'To the Royal Academy.' He wrote a whole essay on farts!" Dan grinned with delight. "He's proposing a scientific study on different fart smells. You're right, Amy. This guy was a genius! ~ Rick Riordan

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot. ~ Benjamin Franklin

(Ben) Franklin was never content to let opportunity find him. ~ H.W. Brands

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. ~ James Bovard

Thirteen virtues necessary for true success: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face. - Ben Franklin ~ Benjamin Franklin

Suddenly Paris fashion-that bellwether for the French mind-had to be à l'Amérique: tailors manufactured "insurgent coats" and "lightning-conductor dresses" (in honor of Ben Franklin, with two wires hanging to the ground). ~ Tom Reiss

Virtues, of ...
Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Lighthouses are more useful than churches." - Ben Franklin ~ Edwin Herbert

[Benjamin Franklin]identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate
temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility
and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues. ~ Gretchen Rubin

Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. "They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate." ~ Charlie Munger

When you write biographies, whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein, you discover something amazing: They are human. ~ Walter Isaacson

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. - BEN FRANKLIN, POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK T ~ Neil Gaiman

As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. ( ... )Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed. ~ John Taylor Gatto

Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year's resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It's difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won't enjoy the process. If you don't find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then - unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin - you'll soon give up. But you don't really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness. ~ Jonathan Haidt

This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin. ~ Orson Scott Card

Karl stood up and pointed at the large portraits on the wall. He swept the room from George Washington to Ben Franklin to John Adams to Thomas Jefferson. "Soldier, Printer, Lawyer, Scholar. You become a politician because the people make you one, not because you desire to be one. ~ Jeff Ferry

Sloth and Silence are a Fool's Virtues ~ Benjamin Franklin

Ben Franklin advises his grandson not to let even the American Revolution interrupt his studies, urging of young adulthood, This is the time of life in which you are to lay the foundations of your future improvement and of your importance among men. If this season is neglected, it will be like cutting off the spring from the year. ~ H.W. Brands

Any society that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Ben Franklin ~ Benjamin Franklin

Great job, you just executed Ben Franklin! - Otto Ray ~ Monet Polny

Thought all the wilderness of America was in the West till the Ghost of the Susquehanna showed me different. No, there is a wilderness in the East; it's the same wilderness Ben Franklin plodded in the oxcart days when he was postmaster, the same as it was when George Washington was a wildbuck Indian-fighter, when Daniel Boone told stories by Pennsylvania lamps and promised to find the Gap, when Bradford built his road and men whooped her up in log cabins. There were not great Arizona spaces for the little man, just the bushy wilderness of eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, the backroads, the black-tar roads that curve among the mournful rivers like Susquehanna, Monongahela, old Potomac and Monocacy. ~ Jack Kerouac

Fascist intellectuals, such as Ugo Spirito, made the round of conferences preaching the virtues of postcapitalism fascism and in fact tried to nudge the structure in a 'leftist' direction by calling for more collective control and even corporative ownership of the economy. Mussolini looked abroad to find that Franklin Roosevelt was merely seeking to emulate Italy's innovations. ~ Charles S. Maier

Is commonplace today to find large groups of people who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of all the basic necessities of its citizens. Benjamin Franklin, however, wrote: To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity; it is godlike; but, if we provide encouragement for laziness, and supports for folly, may we not be found fighting against the order of God and nature, which perhaps has appointed want and misery as the proper punishments for, and cautions against, as well as necessary consequences of, idleness and extravagance? Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be very circumspect, lest we do more harm than good.3 ~ Ben Carson

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices. ~ Benjamin Franklin

We believe there should be a huge area between everything you should do and everything you can do without getting into legal trouble. I don't think you should come anywhere near that line. We don't deserve much credit for this. It helps us make more money. I'd like to believe that we'd behave well even if it didn't work. But more often, we've made extra money from doing the right thing. Ben Franklin said I'm not moral because of it's the right thing to do - but because it's the best policy. ~ Charlie Munger

I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

Whoever feels pain in hearing a good character of his neighbor, will feel a pleasure in the reverse. And those who despair to rise in distinction by their virtues, are happy if others can be depressed to a level of themselves. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Virtues, of ...
Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. ~ Benjamin Franklin

But we understand our liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiary values that help realize opportunity - all those homespun virtues that Benjamin Franklin first popularized in Poor Richard's Almanack and that have continued to inspire our allegiance through successive generations. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.
These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will - a confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above the circumstances of our birth. But these values also express a broader confidence that so long as individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests, society as a whole will prosper. ~ Barack Obama

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I'm told by my young friends that experience is much more important than books. Of course Ben Franklin had something to say about experience and fools, but even Franklin thought that a fool would learn by his experience. That has proven false in the modern world. Some people are simply unwilling to learn under any circumstances, which maybe, even then, wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so damned proud of it. ~ Nikki Giovanni

The feeling of freedom, of seein' the light
It's Ben Franklin with a key and a kite! You see it, right? ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

You may give give a man office, but you cannot give him discretion ~ Benjamin Franklin

all monsters were misunderstood. ~ Tom Franklin

Diligence overcomes difficulties; sloth makes them. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

I had a slight feeling of babysitting as we walked soberly along together using all our old phrases, making all our old jokes, not quite feeling all our old fondness. ~ Ben Dolnick

She possesses what someone once described to me as all the unlovable virtues. ~ Isaac Asimov

You sometimes find something good in the lunatic fringe. In fact, we have got as part of our social and economic government today a whole lot of things which in my boyhood were considered lunatic fringe, and yet they are now part of everyday life. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

We all have vices, visible and invisible. Some we deliberately keep secret. Others we don't even realize or we refuse to admit we have ... Vices can be lots of fun, or they can turn your life into a living hell. Accept them for what they are, just another aspect of the mind's creation, and you can enjoy them - if you choose - without being broken by them.
- Zeena Schreck for VICE Magazine ~ Zeena Schreck