Benjamin Franklin Quotes

There's many witty men whose brains can't fill their bellies.

Keep flax from fire, and youth from gaming.

Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge

Indeed, when religious people quarrel about religion, or hungry people quarrel about victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.

You can't tell anyone anything. You have to teach people for them to remember. Let the person experience what you are teaching and they will learn.

Pay what you owe and you'll know what's your own.

I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them.

To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.

The things of this world take up too much of my time, of which indeed I have too little left, to undertake anything like a reformation in religion.

Love your Neighbour; yet don't pull down your Hedge.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

When you taste honey, remember gall.

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues

An investment in education always pays the highest returns.

There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace.

I would rather have it said, 'He lived usefully,' than, 'He died rich.'

Our whole life is but a greater and longer childhood.

Take one thing with another, and the world is a pretty good sort of a world, and it is our duty to make the best of it, and be thankful.

Neglect mending a small fault and 'twill soon be a great one.

Anger and folly walk cheeck by jowl.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.

What I am to be, I am now becoming.

If you give up your freedom for safety, you don't deserve either one

When circumstances don't fit our ideas they become our difficulties

Remember, that six pounds a year is but a groat a day.

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended

'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Interest which blinds some People, enlightens others.

Singularity in the right hath ruined many; happy those who are convinced of the general opinion.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

He that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night.

Revealed religion has no weight with me.

Taxes are indeed very heavy - We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness. Three times as much by our Pride. And four times as much by our Folly.

It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.

Think of these things, whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must account.

Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself

One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning than every body else.

The used key is always bright.

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.

Out of adversity comes opportunity.

An honest Man will receive neither Money nor Praise that is not his due.

Innocence is its own defense.

Then plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.

He's a fool that makes his doctor his heir.

Wise men learn by others' harms, fools scarcely by their own.