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)
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- William Jennings Bryan American Political leader
- Benjamin Harrison 23rd President of the USA
- Che Guevara Argentine-Cuban Revolutionary
- John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn British Statesman
- Henry L. Stimson American Political leader
- J. William Fulbright American Politician
- Edmund Burke British Philosopher, Statesman
- Laurens van der Post South African Explorer, Writer
- Dante Alighieri Italian Poet, Philosopher
- Adolf Hitler German Fascist Dictator
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