Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklinwas one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth17 January 1706
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one's temper and disturb one's quiet.
Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.
A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.
There cannot be a stronger natural right than that of a man's making the best profit he can of the natural produce of his lands.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
I have no private interest in the reception of my inventions by the world, having never made, nor proposed to make, the least profit by any of them.
Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
When a man and a woman die, as poets sung, His heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue
We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing!
Bright as the day and as the morning fair, Such Cloe is, & common as the air.
Women & Wine, Game & Deceit, Make the Wealth small and the Wants great.
Up, sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough