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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

Inspirational Quotations by Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) was an American statesman, inventor, diplomat, writer, and scientist. This leading figure in the American struggle for independence was one of the most versatile and talented men in colonial America.

Born in Boston, Franklin apprenticed to his brother, a printer, and began writing anonymously for his brother’s newspaper. He moved to Philadelphia, then to London, and returned to Philadelphia and established himself as a printer. He bought the Pennsylvania Gazette and turned it into one of the American colonies’ significant newspapers. He also wrote and published Poor Richard’s Almanack, an astronomy journal, under the pseudonym Richard Saunders. The Almanack became well known for the witty proverbs and maxims that Franklin included as fillers.

A leading delegate to the Continental Congress, Franklin became its architect. He was the only individual to sign all the three key documents of the new nation: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty with Great Britain that ended the American Revolution, and the U.S. Constitution.

Franklin held various government posts, including that of the deputy paymaster general of the colonies, and emissary to France and Great Britain. Franklin was also involved in many public projects, including founding the American Philosophical Society, a subscription library, and, in 1751, an academy that later became the University of Pennsylvania.

Franklin’s foremost scientific achievements were the formulation of a theory of electricity, which introduced positive and negative electricity, the demonstration of the electrical nature of lightning. His primary inventions were the lightning conductor, the “Franklin stove” (a kind of freestanding cast-iron heater,) and bifocal spectacles.

Franklin was legendary for his lifelong quest for self-improvement, as he thoroughly documented in his Autobiography (1791.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Benjamin Franklin

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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

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