Recommended Reading
- ‘Benjamin Franklin: An American Life‘ by Walter Isaacson
- ‘The Way to Wealth‘ by Benjamin Franklin
- ‘The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin‘ by Benjamin Franklin
- ‘The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin‘ by H.W. Brands
- ‘Ben Franklin’s Almanac of Wit, Wisdom, and Practical Advice‘ by The Old Farmer’s Almanac
Inspirational Quotes by Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)
Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone, extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy and superstition; and with one commanding characteristic, whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying or scribbling, never a gentleman.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Hypocrisy
Would you live with ease, do what you should, and not what you please. Success has ruined many a man.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Kings, Royalty, Flattery, Queens
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Genius, Talent
That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Peace
There can be economy only where there is efficiency.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Economy, Economics
Remember that credit is money.
—Benjamin Franklin
It’s easy to see—hard to foresee.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Vision
Whilst the last members were signing the Constitution, Doctor Franklin, looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art, a rising, from a setting, sun. I have, said he, often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising, and not a setting sun.
—Benjamin Franklin
By heaven we understand a state of happiness infinite in degree, and endless in duration.
—Benjamin Franklin
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Books, Reading
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
If you can’t pay for a thing, don’t buy it. If you can’t get paid for it, don’t sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don’t wait for time.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Business
The nearest I can make it out, “Love your Enemies” means, “Hate your Friends”
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Enemies
News is that which comes from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point on the compass, then it is a class ; publication and not news.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: News
Those have a short Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.
—Benjamin Franklin
Think of three Things, whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must account.
—Benjamin Franklin
Great spenders are bad lenders.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Money
The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candle of industry and economy.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Liberty
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Crime
The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Politics
My rule, in which I have always found satisfaction, is, never to turn aside in public affairs through views of private interest; but to go straight forward in doing what appears to me right at the time, leaving the consequences with Providence.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Posterity
A good newspaper and Bible in every house, a good schoolhouse in every district, and a church in every neighborhood, all appreciated as they deserve, are the chief support of virtue, morality, civil liberty, and religion.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Education
Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad Habits.
—Benjamin Franklin
Half the Truth is often a great Lie.
—Benjamin Franklin
Our whole life is but a greater and longer childhood.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Childhood
Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad or sits idle one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Time
There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Literature
A great Talker may be no Fool, but he is one that relies on him.
—Benjamin Franklin
Christianity commands us to pass by injuries; policy, to let them pass by us.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Injury
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Despair
Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hopes will die fasting. There are no gains without pains. He that hath a trade hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor; but then the trade must be worked at, and the calling followed, or neither the, estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious, we shall never starve; for, at the workingman’s house hunger looks in, but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for industry pays debts, while idleness and neglect increase them.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Industry, Labor, Honor, Pain
He that would be master of his own, must not be bound for another.
—Benjamin Franklin
In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Diet, Weight
He who rises late may trot all day, and not overtake his business at night.
—Benjamin Franklin
Learn of the skillful; he that teaches himself, has a fool for his master.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Learning
Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Biography, Legacy, History
A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Politics, Politicians
If you would relish food, labor for it before you take it; if enjoy clothing, pay for it before you wear it; if you would sleep soundly, take a clear conscience to bed with you.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Effort
Laws too gentle, are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
—Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Law
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Jennings Bryan American Political leader
Benjamin Harrison American Political leader
Che Guevara Argentine-Cuban Revolutionary
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn British Statesman
Henry L. Stimson American Political leader
J. William Fulbright American Political leader
Edmund Burke British Philosopher, Statesman
Laurens van der Post South African Explorer, Writer
Dante Alighieri Italian Poet, Philosopher
Adolf Hitler German Fascist Dictator