Benjamin Franklin Quotes Proverbs, and Aphorisms
- January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790
- American
- Polymath, Founding Father of the United States, Inventor, Diplomat, Writer
Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath—statesman, inventor, writer, and diplomat—who played a crucial role in the founding of the United States. A key figure in drafting the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, he also served as ambassador to France, securing vital support during the American Revolution. Beyond politics, Franklin was a pioneering scientist and inventor, known for his experiments with electricity and creations like the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove. He also founded civic institutions such as libraries, hospitals, and the University of Pennsylvania. Though a man of his time with complex views on slavery, Franklin is celebrated as a symbol of American ingenuity, pragmatism, and enlightenment values.
- “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
- “Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.”
- “For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.”
- “Lost time is never found again.”
- “Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.”
- “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
- “One today is worth two tomorrows.”
- “Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.”
- “I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.”
- “When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?”
- “We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.”
- “He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.”
- “He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.”
- “Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.”
- “Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.”
- “I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.”
- “A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.”
- “Danger is sauce for prayers.”
- “If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.”
- “As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.”
- “The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.”
- “At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.”
- “Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.”
- “Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”
- “He that can have patience can have what he will.”
- “I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.”
- “A penny saved is two pence clear.”
- “It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.”
- “Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.”
- “He that has not got a wife is not yet a complete man.”
- “If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.”
- “Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.”
- “Where liberty is, there is my country.”
- “He that sows thorns should never go barefoot.”
- “He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.”
- “It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.”
- “There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.”
- “The discontented man finds no easy chair.”
- “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.”
- “The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.”
- “Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”
- “It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.”
- “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.”
- “There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.”
- “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about 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.”
- “The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.”
- “A place for everything, everything in its place.”
- “When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.”
- “You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?”
- “He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.”
- “Distrust and caution are the parents of security.”
- “Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.”
- “Creditors have better memories than debtors.”
- “A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.”
- “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.”
- “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.”
- “Never confuse motion with action.”
- “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
- “To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.”
- “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
- “Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones — with ingratitude.”
- “The doors of wisdom are never shut.”
- “There was never a good war, or a bad peace.”
- “Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
- “A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.”
- “Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.”
- “It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”
- “In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.”
- “Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.”
- “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
- “Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.”
- “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.”
- “Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.”
- “Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”
- “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
- “He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
- “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
- “Fatigue is the best pillow.”
- “Observe all men, thyself most.”
- “Remember that credit is money.”
- “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
- “He that’s secure is not safe.”
- “Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter.”
- “From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.”
- “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.”
- “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
- “God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: ‘This is my country.'”
- “Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.”
- “When in doubt, don’t.”
- “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”
- “You may delay, but time will not.”
- “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”
- “Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.”
- “He that rises late must trot all day.”
- “The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.”
- “Marriage is the most natural state of man, and… the state in which you will find solid happiness.”
- “When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.”
- “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.”
- “Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?”
- “If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.”
- “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”