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
The purpose of money was to purchase one's freedom to pursue that which is useful and interesting.
Wherever desirable superfluities are imported, industry is excited, and thereby plenty is produced. Were only necessaries permitted to be purchased, men would work no more than was necessary for that purpose.
We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us while they afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge or in doing good to our fellow-creatures, is a kind of benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance and answer none of these intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we get rid of them. Death is that way.
If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to a purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity
The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much; always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can; to hearken to what is said and to answer to the purpose.
The Master-piece of Man, is to live to the purpose
When a man and a woman die, as poets sung, His heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue
The school looks very good. The uniforms are a good thing. It will be easy for my wife. She won't have to fight about clothes.
It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its People one tenth Part of their Time, to be employed in its Service.
Is there any thing Men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy?
Think how great a proportion of mankind, consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the pract
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest
Anger and Folly walk cheek-by-jole; Repentance treads on both their Heels.
And whether you're an honest man, or whether you're a thief,Depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.