Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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)

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Storytelling

When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Wisdom

When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Water, One liners

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
Topics: America

The Sun never repents of the good he does, nor does he ever demand a recompence.
Benjamin Franklin

Beware the hobby that eats.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Caution

Anger and folly walk cheek by jole.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Anger

Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Pride, Idleness

If you do not want to be forgotten, when you are dead and rotting, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
Benjamin Franklin

The things which hurt, instruct.
Benjamin Franklin

When men are employed, they are best contented; for on the days they worked they were good-natured and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day’s work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Work

Some are weather-wise, some are otherwise
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Weather, One liners

The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken to what is said and to answer to the purpose.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Conversation

Work as if you were to live 100 years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Miscellaneous, Prayer

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
Topics: Caution

If you do what you should not, you must bear what you would not.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Action, Evils

When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one, then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and cancelling them out, one against the other, I take the course indicated by what remains.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Action, Decisions

Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions, and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy pocket begin to thrive; creditors will not insult, nor want oppress, nor hunger bite, nor nakedness freeze thee.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Economy

The way to be safe is never to be secure.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Safety, Security

The early morning hath gold in its mouth.
Benjamin Franklin

He that’s content, hath enough; He that complains, has too much.
Benjamin Franklin

He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.
Benjamin Franklin

If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Self-Discovery, Confidence, Service, Self-reliance

The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been formed with seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist.
Benjamin Franklin

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Miscellaneous, Change

Life is too short to be little. You must enlarge your imagination and then act on it.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Imagination, Living

Setting too good an Example is a Kind of slander seldom forgiven.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Example

He that can have patience can have what he will.
Benjamin Franklin
Topics: Resilience, Patience, One liners

If you’d know the Value of Money, go and borrow some.
Benjamin Franklin

A great Talker may be no Fool, but he is one that relies on him.
Benjamin Franklin

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