Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Your net worth to the
world is usually determined by what
remains after your bad habits are
subtracted from your good ones

The cat in gloves catches no mice.

He that is the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

Thinking aloud is a habit which is responsible for most of mankind's misery.

But our great security lies, I think, in our growing strength, both in numbers and wealth; ... unless, by a neglect of military discipline, we should lose all martial spirit ...; for there is much truth in the Italian saying, Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.

[A] great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.

Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the be.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war...This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.

He is ill clothed, who is bare of virtue.

If you would know the worth of money, go and try to borrow some.

Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful.

"A place for everything, everything in its place".

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

Words may show a man's wit, actions his meaning.