Franklin Quotes

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous even when they deserve to be left in the past. ~ Franklin Foer

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

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants? ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

America faces a new race that has awakened. ~ E. Franklin Frazier

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

Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. ~ Nikola Tesla

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

Peace is not the absence of war - peace is the absence of fear. ~ Ursula 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

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

Hunger is the best pickle. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Columbia was a wonderful label for me. Wonderful. The records I made there garnered me an audience. I won a number of polls during the years that I was at Columbia. The Downbeat Jazz Poll. Leonard Feather, who was a huge critic back in the day, different polls that he had. The Playboy poll, a number of polls. So the music was great. ~ Aretha Franklin

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction ... And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man ... ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

One of the great creative statesmen of our age was Franklin Roosevelt. He was creative precisely because he preferred experiment to ideology. ~ Robert Kennedy

He squinted at us. "You really believe there might be zombies in Franklin Village?"
"Maybe," I said. "We just thought we'd patrol at night and search for them."
"But that could be dangerous," Trevor said. He leaned toward us. His eyes darted from Alec to me. "That could be very dangerous."
A chill rolled down my back. He had suddenly changed. His voice deepened. And his words sounded like a warning.
Or a threat. ~ R.L. Stine

Is that all?" asked the butler. His slightly melodic accent was nearly impossible to place. It could have been British, but it wasn't any British accent I had ever heard. The words Old English came to mind, too. As in old, old English. This, I'm certain, was a psychic hit, but I could have been wrong. Just how old Franklin was remained to be seen. "Thank you, Franklin. That will be all," said Kingsley, waving him off. The butler nodded. "If you and the lady need anything else, please do not hesitate to rouse me from a deep and satisfying sleep." "We won't, Franklin. Now, off you go! ~ J.R. Rain

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

I think the best singers in the world, historically, are American. Britain's got its fair share, as well, but some of the greatest singers, ever, whether you're talking about Whitney [Houston] or Mariah [Carey] or Aretha Franklin, are from the legacy here. ~ Simon Cowell

The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred ... ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Beer is proof that God loves us. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign. In my opinion, it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

I had been poor myself, and knew what awaited him in the world. He would find that they who fawned on him most would be first to turn their backs on him now. He would be rudely disillusioned regarding the fables of love and friendship, and would become cynical, bitter, and sceptical of there being any disinterested good in human nature. ~ Miles Franklin

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

It is essential for politicians to make a connection with us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Teddy Roosevelt did, as John F. Kennedy did, as Ronald Reagan did. ~ Peter Jennings

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

I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on THIS HOUSE, and on All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof! President Franklin D. Roosevelt had this lettered in gold in the marble over the fireplace in the State Dining Room of the White House. The quotation above follows the capitalization used in the inscription. ~ John Adams

False riches, consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons. ~ Joseph Franklin Rutherford

It is a wise provision that youth cannot see what it owes the previous generation. This is a chicken that comes back to roost in heavier years. ~ Miles 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

How many of us appreciate the joys of a simple tortilla? ~ Jonathan Franklin

Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

she uncurls danny's small fists and clasps his hand to hers and notices the way even in his sleep his fingers seem to know their way around hers; their hands together form their own organ, or an x, like on a map that insists you are here. ~ Emily 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

she thought about being held to the woman's chest, and lying there hair-smoothed and quiet until she felt she'd found home. ~ Emily Franklin

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

...the postwar revolution in America's religious identity had its roots not in the foreign policy panic of the 1950s but rather in the domestic politics of the 1930s and early 1940s. Decades before Eisenhower's inaugural prayers, corporate titans enlisted conservative clergymen in an effort to promote new political arguments embodied in the phrase "freedom under God." As the private correspondence and public claims of the men leading this charge make clear, this new ideology was designed to defeat the state power its architects feared most - not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal administration in Washington. ~ Kevin M. Kruse

Of the six men who have done most to make America the wonder and the joy she is to all of us, not one could be the citizen of a government so constituted; for Washington and Franklin and Jefferson, certainly the three mightiest leaders in our early history, were heretics in their day, Deists, as men called them; and Garrison and Lincoln and Sumner, certainly the three mightiest in these later times, would all be disfranchised by the proposed amendment. Lincoln could not have taken the oath of office had such a clause been in the Constitution. ~ John Chadwick

The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin asserted his conservatism more forcefully. Most notable was an anonymous piece entitled "On the Laboring Poor," which he signed "Medius, ~ Walter Isaacson

It is time to provide a smashing answer for those cynical men who say that a democracy cannot be honest, cannot be efficient ... We have in the darkest moments of our national trials retained our faith in our own ability to master our own destiny. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

Since Franklin Roosevelt's leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them while seeking, by hook or by crook, to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application. ~ Michael Ignatieff

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

True wealth is not a static thing. It is a living thing made out of the disposition of men to create and distribute the good things of life with rising standards of living. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Venison and venery defeated me. ~ Benjamin Franklin

FDR's struggle with illness and subsequent metal-filled life are remarkably similar to the story of another great leader who was part robot: Iron Man. FDR, much like Tony Stark, was cocky and arrogant before his life-changing diagnosis, but the years of suffering changed all of that, and he emerged more humble, more fearless, and ready to defend America. Also, FDR wore iron braces and used a wheelchair, which, for the purposes of this comparison, is exactly like a well-armed robot suit. ~ Daniel O'Brien

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the new president. He won in a landslide. Landslide makes me think of rocks and dirt falling down a mountain. Not sure what that has to do with an election. But maybe it does. My papa voted. He is a pebble. Lots of pebbles make a landslide, right? His vote counted.

Roosevelt will move into the White House and will have a fine supper to celebrate, I guess. Papa had cornbread and buttermilk and beans with his friends at my house. I bet papa enjoyed his celebration more. ~ Sharon M. Draper

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

F. Franklin the Fourth has a job with a firm rich in heritage, money and pretentiousness, a firm vastly superior to Brodnax and Speer. His sidekicks at the moment are W. Harper Whittenson, an arrogant little snot who will, thankfully, leave Memphis and practice with a mega-firm in Dallas; J. Townsend Gross, who has accepted a position with another huge firm; and James Straybeck, a sometimes friendly sort who's suffered three years of law school without an initial to place before his name or numerals to stick after it. With such a short name, his future as a big-firm lawyer is in jeopardy. I doubt if he'll make it. ~ John Grisham

Death takes no bribes. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less. ~ Maya Angelou

Never praise your cider or your horse ~ Benjamin Franklin

I have a terrific pain in the back of my head. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

„I don't think you put the swear word in the right place, Grandpa," Teddy says. When Dad first came here, my boys would look shocked whenever Dad went Old-Faithful-profane, and I began to wonder if Lisa and I shouldn't swear more so Franklin and Teddy weren't so put off by curse words. ~ Jess Walter

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

Women can always think as much as they like, an' they could get up on a platform an' talk till they bust, as long as they didn't want the world to be made no better, an' they wouldn't be thought unwomanly. It's soon as a woman wants any practical good done that she is considered a unwomanly creature. ~ Miles 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

The blood dried on his good hand, he passed his palm over her hair. It curled about his wrist and sprung back into displace as the breeze fluttered by. In the firelight, it was golden like the dandelions of which she'd spoken. The ones that had grown along the Franklin riverbank in late summer. The ones he had lost any faith in since he'd committed his first murder there. ~ V.S. Carnes

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

In my desperation to try to lull myself into a gentle sloom, I have created a list of things that will often assist my descent into delicious treacle-sleep. The list includes a series of things I can do if I go to bed and wake up early, and includes things like playing games and reading books, but one item that continually seems to work is telling myself:

The faster I go to sleep, the faster I can have cookies for breakfast.

This idea might seem rudimentary, but it staves off the sulks long enough that I can find a few hours of sleep, even on the hottest of days. If only Biscuit Power worked for other insomniacs, cookies might save humanity from itself. ~ Michelle Franklin

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

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

Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins. Unfortunately the beautiful women seemed equally rare and inaccessible. At his office and at his boarding-house the girls were mere mice, or cattish, or kittenish, or had insufficiently read the advertisements. ~ John Collier

One trouble with developing speed reading skills is that by the time you realize a book is boring you've already finished it. ~ Franklin P. Jones

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

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory ... we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it [Islam] is a very evil and wicked religion ... When you read the Koran and you read the verses from the Koran, it instructs the killing of the infidel, for those that are non-Muslim. ~ Franklin Graham

Once again, Kirk Franklin takes the church beyond the traditional, transitioning his life's experiences into life lessons. Clearly there is more to this man than great music. You will feel the beat of his heart and faith. ~ T.D. Jakes

Fasting breaks the spirit of heaviness. ~ Jentezen Franklin

When the lunatic is met with ideas incompatible with his delusion he distorts facts by rationalization to preserve the inner consistency of his delusions. ~ E. Franklin Frazier

If, my dear, you seek to slumber;
Count of stars an endless number;
If you will continue wakeful;
Count the drops that make a lakeful;
Then if vigilance yet above you
Hover, Count the times I love you;
And if slumber sill repel you
Count the times I do not tell you. ~ Franklin P. Adams

jenna had felt sexy-funny, like lucille ball with flour streaks on her face, a crumb-covered apron that didn't exactly flatter her, and yet nick had kissed her like a prom king falling for the reinvented girl in a movie. ~ Emily Franklin

With the '60s era and Motown, my grandparents actually introduced us to that when I was younger, so I grew up listening to the Jackson Five, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Supremes and Diana Ross' solo stuff. I just loved it. ~ Jordin Sparks

Let me make it clear that I do not assert that a President and the Congress must on all points agree with each other at all times. Many times in history there has been complete disagreement between the two branches of the Government, and in these disagreements sometimes the Congress has won and sometimes the President has won. But during the Administration of the present President we have had neither agreement nor a clear-cut battle. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Above all, try something ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt