Benjamin Franklin Quotes

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I do not find that I grow any older. Being arrived at seventy, and considering that by traveling further in the same road I should probably be led to the grave, I stopped short, turned about, and walked back again; which having done these four years, you may now call me sixty-six. Advise those old friends of ours to follow my example; keep up your spirits, and that will keep up your bodies. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I've striven my whole life for humility, but if I'd ever achieved it, I'd probably be pretty damn proud of that. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day. ~ Benjamin Franklin

the eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us.
if all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Since they are our right, let us be vigilant to preserve them uninfringed, and free from encroachments. If animosities arise, and we should be obliged to resort to party, let each of us range himself on the side which unfurls the ensigns of public good. Faction will then vanish, which, if not timely suppressed, may overturn the balance, the palladium of liberty, and crush us under its ruins. ~ Benjamin Franklin

There's small Revenge in Words, but Words may be greatly revenged ~ Benjamin Franklin

A place for everything and everything in its place - via http://bit.ly/mUa1mm ~ Samuel Smiles

Hunger is the best pickle. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He that hath a calling, hath an office of profit and honor. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Beer is proof that God loves us. ~ Benjamin Franklin

That which hurts, also instructs. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Success is the residue of planning. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Historians relate not so much what is done as what they would have believed. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Ill customs and bad advice are seldom forgotten. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He who will not be counseled cannot be helped. ~ Benjamin Franklin

On the whole, I wonder'd much how such a man came to be intrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but, having since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining, and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The noblest question in the world is: 'What good may I do in it?' ~ Benjamin Franklin

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

We have no poor houses in the Colonies, and if we had, we would have no one to put in them, as in the Colonies there is not a single unemployed man, no poor and no vagabonds. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, make the execution of that same plan his sole study and business. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Since I cannot govern my own tongue, though within my own teeth, how can I hope to govern the tongue of others? ~ Benjamin Franklin

This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia. ~ Benjamin Franklin

My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin - the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man ... Where are the life-size - or even pint-size - Benjamin Franklins of today? ~ Isidor Isaac Rabi

I was born with a reading list that I will never finish.


The person who deserves that most pity is a lonely one on a rainy day that does not know how to read.
Benjamin Franklin ~ Maude Casey

Duty is not beneficial because it is commanded,
but is commanded because it is beneficial. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The nearest I can make it out, "Love your Enemies" means, "Hate your Friends" ~ Benjamin Franklin

I am what I am and that's all that I am and if I'm supposed to be somebody else, why do I look like me? ~ Benjamin Franklin

What signifies Philosophy that does not apply to some Use? May we not learn from hence, that black Clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot Sunny Climate or Season, as white ones; because in such Cloaths the Body is more heated by the Sun when we walk abroad, and are at the same time heated by the Exercise, which double Heat is apt to bring on putrid dangerous Fevers? The Soldiers and Seamen, who must march and labour in the Sun, should in the East or West Indies have an Uniform of white? ~ Benjamin Franklin

When Knaves betray each other, one can scarce be blamed or the other pitied. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Venison and venery defeated me. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The cunning man steals a horse, the wise man lets him alone. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Death takes no bribes. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Never praise your cider or your horse ~ Benjamin Franklin

Do good to your friends to keep them,to your enemies to win them. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Those who trade freedom for safety deserve neither ~ Benjamin Franklin

Vice knows she is ugly, so puts on her mask. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Taxes are indeed very heavy -
We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness.
Three times as much by our Pride.
And four times as much by our Folly. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Observe all men, thyself most. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Perhaps I was too saucy and provoking. ~ 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

Eat what you like, but dress for other people. ~ Benjamin Franklin

A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. ~ Benjamin Franklin

And whether you're an honest man, or whether you're a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Discontented Minds, and Fevers of the Body are not to be cured by changing Beds or Businesses. ~ Benjamin Franklin

It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Do not let fancy outrun your means. ~ Benjamin Franklin

That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved. ~ Benjamin Franklin

My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He that steals the old man's supper does him no wrong. ~ Benjamin Franklin

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. ~ Benjamin Franklin

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body. ~ Benjamin Franklin

As to the kindness you mention, I wish I could have been of more service to you than I have been, but if I had, the only thanks that I should desire are that you would always be ready to serve any other person that may need your assistance, and so let good offices go around, for humankind are all of a family. As for my own part, when I am employed in serving others I do not look upon myself as conferring favors but paying debts. ~ Benjamin Franklin

If any man flatters me, I'll flatter him again; tho' he were my best Friend. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Keep conscience clear, then never fear. ~ Benjamin Franklin

That is simple. In the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay. ~ Benjamin Franklin

He that resolves to mend hereafter, resolves not to mend now. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I grew convinced that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life, and I formed written resolutions ... to practice them ever while I lived. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Hang together, or hang separately. Benjamin Franklin is a genius. ~ Renay Williams

One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than every body else. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society. ~ Benjamin Franklin

A fine genius in his own country is like gold in the mine. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Why does the blind man's wife paint herself. ~ Benjamin Franklin

What you would seem to be, be really. ~ Benjamin Franklin

You can't tell anyone anything. You have to teach people for them to remember. Let the person experience what you are teaching and they will learn. ~ Benjamin Franklin

It took hours, but all of a sudden as she was drawing the plug-in for a vacuum pump that felt as if it was radiating cold, although she didn't know how, Claire saw . . . something. It was like a flash of intuition, one of those moments that came to her sometimes when she thoughtabout higher-order physics problems. Not calculation, exactly, not logic. Instinct.She saw what he was doing, and for that one second, it was beautiful.Crazy, but in a beautiful kind of way. Like everything Myrnin did, it twisted the basicrules of physics, bent them and reshaped them until they became . . . something else. He's agenius, she thought. She'd always known that, but this . . . this was something else. Something beyond all his usual tinkering and weirdness.
"It's going to work," she said. Her voice sounded odd. She carefully set the vacuum pumpin its place on the meticulously labeled canvas sheet. Myrnin, who was sitting in his armchair with his feet comfortably on a hassock, looked up. He was reading a book through tiny little square spectacles that might have once belonged to Benjamin Franklin.
"Well, of course it's going to work," he said. "What did you expect? I do know what I'm doing."
This from a man wearing clothing from the OMG No store, and his battered vampire-bunny slippers. He'd crossed his feet at the ankles on top of a footstool, and both the bunnies' red mouths were flapping open to reveal their sharp, pointy teeth.
Claire grinned, suddenly full of enthusi ~ Rachel Caine

I would advise you to read with a pen in your hand and enter in a little book short hints of what you feel that is common or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such portcullis in your memory. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Little leaks sink the ship. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Your argument is sound, nothing but sound. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Eat few suppers, and you'll need few medicines. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The only time a question should be asked is when all other possibilities of finding the answer for yourself have been eliminated. ~ Benjamin Franklin

You never want to give up your liberty, even if you are told it is for security. The Patriot Act is a perfect example of giving up liberty for security. It says let us tap your phones so we can keep safe. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I don't really care. The whole division can hate me. The whole roster can hate me. The whole of America can hate me. I only need one American to love me. And that's Mr. Benjamin Franklin. As long as he loves me, I am good. ~ Conor McGregor

The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war. They that are on their guard, and appear ready to receive their adversaries, are in much less danger of being attacked, than the supine, secure, and negligent. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see. ~ Benjamin Franklin

There is no good war or bad peace ~ Benjamin Franklin

Men differ daily about things which are subject to sense, is it likely then they should agree about things invisible. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Take a coin from your purse and invest it in your mind. It will come pouring out of your mind and overflow your purse. ~ Benjamin Franklin

A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded - such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him.

'What you have told us,' says he, 'is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours.

'In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains.

'They said to each other, "It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her." They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: "Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit i ~ Benjamin Franklin

He who empties his purse into his mind, shall never go bankrupt. ~ Benjamin Franklin

How can any Action be meritorious of Praise or Dispraise, Reward or Punishment, when the natural Principle of Self-Love is the only and the irresistible Motive to it? ~ Benjamin Franklin

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church. ~ Benjamin Franklin

After all, wedlock is the natural state of man. A bachelor is not a complete human being. He is like the odd half of a pair of scissors, which has not yet found its fellow, and therefore is not even half so useful as they might be together. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. ~ Benjamin Franklin

How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts! ~ Benjamin Franklin

Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Dear young people, choose God for your portion; love his truth, and be not ashamed of it; choose for your company such as serve him in uprightness; and shun as most dangerous the conversation of those whose lives are of an ill savor; for by frequenting such company some hopeful young people have come to great loss, and been drawn from less evils to greater, to their utter ruin. In the bloom of youth no ornament is so lovely as that of virtue, nor any enjoyments equal to those which we partake of in fully resigning ourselves to the Divine will. These enjoyments add sweetness to all other comforts, and give true satisfaction in company and conversation, where people are mutually acquainted with it; and as your minds are thus seasoned with the truth, you will find strength to abide steadfast to the testimony of it, and be prepared for services in the church. ~ Benjamin Franklin

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

I firmly believe this ... that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Britain was formerly the America of the Germans. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Enjoy the present hour, be mindful of the past; And neither fear nor wish the Approaches of the last. Learn of the skillful: He that teaches himself, hath a fool for his master. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. expect nothing - get nothing! but expect something - get something!! ~ Benjamin Franklin

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. ~ 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

Abuses of the freedom of speech ought to be repressed, but to whom are we to commit the power of doing it? ~ Benjamin Franklin

A complete history of sexual scandal in Washington will probably never be written, because the public does not want to read a 20,000 page book that needs to be updated weekly (note to self: maybe they DO -- idea for next book). From the earliest days of the Republic, when our first Ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, fondled and groped the awestruck wives of his French hosts while on mission to Paris, shortly to be succeeded by the even-more-amorous Thomas Jefferson, who broke an ankle in the Louvre while leaping to an assignation with yet another married Frenchwoman, all the way down to our contemporary satyrs, the priapic Kennedys, Wilbur "Fanne Fox" Mills, "Slobbering Bob" Packwood, Bill "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Clinton, etc., our political leaders have repeatedly proven to be incredibly horny old goats. ~ Guillermo Jiménez