Benjamin Franklin Quotes

“If anyone should doubt whether the electrical matter passes through the substance of bodies, or only over along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken through his own body, will probably convince him.”

“A perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.”

“I know not which lives more unnatural lives, obeying husbands, or commanding wives.”

“Industry pays debts, while despair increases them.”

“Is there anything men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy?”

“He is no clown that drives the plow, but he that doth clownish things.”

“Great spenders are bad lenders.”

“Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.”

“Ill customs and bad advice are seldom forgotten.”

“Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.”

“Genius is the ability to hold one's vision steady until it becomes reality”

“To be humble to superiors is a duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.”

“Wars are not paid for in wartime. The bill comes later.”

“To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast in the very lap of fortune.”

“Everybody's human-everybody makes mistakes. If you laugh it off and keep going and try to give it your best the next time around, people respect that.”

“Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water.”

“If principle is good for anything, it is worth living up to.”

“Can anything be constant in a world which is eternally changing?”

“People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security.”

“Constant complaint is the poorest sort of pay for all the comforts we enjoy.”

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

“If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our descendants will be working in the fields to furnish them substance, while they will be in the counting houses rubbing their hands. I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude Jews for all time, your children will curse you in your graves.”

“Nothing great comes without enthusiasm.”

“The discontented man finds no easy chair.”

“After all, wedlock is the natural state of man. A bachelor is not a complete human being. He is like the odd half of a pair of scissors, which has not yet found its fellow, and therefore is not even half so useful as they might be together.”