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
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
Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.
How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!
To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.
I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another.
The things of this world take up too much of my time, of which indeed I have too little left, to undertake anything like a reformation in religion.
Indeed, when religious people quarrel about religion, or hungry people quarrel about victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.
Revealed religion has no weight with me.
Some volumes against Deism fell into my hands ... they produced an effect precisely the reverse to what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the Deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me much more forcibly than the refutation itself; in a word, I soon became a thorough Deist.
The United States Constitutional Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.
In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.