Misattributed Ben Franklin Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something was piercing through me, some kind of heat burning the raw layer under the skin. Something I couldn't then explain and that even now I have trouble transforming from thought into words. But something was happening. A dial was turning. You can imagine a compass needle twitching to life - the smallest pulse - the barest movement - struggling for north. ~ Ben H. Winters

What if by sheer repetition we become the person we most often pretend to be? Does that mean there is no authentic self? Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks? ~ Ben Okri

I don't know why I'm suddenly so angry, but I am. With Delilah, with Luke, with Ben, with myself for letting all of this happen in the first place, for not noticing something was wrong before it was way, way too late. ~ Jennifer Banash

I envy the people who stop eating when they're stressed. I'm an emotional eater. I eat my feelings, and unfortunately, they aren't fat free. They taste a lot like Ben and Jerry's. ~ Kristen Granata

If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling. ~ Ben Kingsley

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy. ~ Ben Macintyre