Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Vessels large may venture more, But little boats should keep near shore.

For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn." There is no evidence that Franklin said this. Scholars believe the saying comes from the Xunzi.

A republic, if you can keep it.

Never leave till tomorrow that which you can do today.

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.

There cannot be good living where there is not good drinking.

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.

One today is worth two tomorrows,

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.

Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Poor Richard

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

Critics are our friends, they show us our faults.

Whilst the last members were signing it Doctor Franklin looking towards the President's Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. "I have," said he, "often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun."