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Quotes by Benjamin Franklin

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.
– Benjamin Franklin
It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.
– Benjamin Franklin
It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.
– Benjamin Franklin
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.
– Benjamin Franklin
It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
– Benjamin Franklin
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
– Benjamin Franklin
Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
– Benjamin Franklin
Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.
– Benjamin Franklin
Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no persuasion move thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollity; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.
– Benjamin Franklin
Let thy discontents be thy secrets.
– Benjamin Franklin
Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.
– Benjamin Franklin
Lost time is never found again.
– Benjamin Franklin
Love and tooth-ache have many cures, but none infallible, except possession and dispossession.
– Benjamin Franklin
Lying rides upon debt's back.
– Benjamin Franklin
Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so. It is not so. It is so. It is not so.
– Benjamin Franklin
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
– Benjamin Franklin
Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.
– Benjamin Franklin
Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.
– Benjamin Franklin
Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.
– Benjamin Franklin
Mine is better than ours.
– Benjamin Franklin
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.
– Benjamin Franklin
Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones - with ingratitude.
– Benjamin Franklin
Necessity never made a good bargain.
– Benjamin Franklin
Never confuse motion with action.
– Benjamin Franklin
Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.
– Benjamin Franklin
Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
– Benjamin Franklin
Nine men in ten are would be suicides.
– Benjamin Franklin
Nothing is more fatal to health than an overcare of it.
– Benjamin Franklin
Observe all men, thyself most.
– Benjamin Franklin
One today is worth two tomorrows.
– Benjamin Franklin
Our necessities never equal our wants.
– Benjamin Franklin
Plough deep while sluggards sleep.
– Benjamin Franklin
Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.
– Benjamin Franklin
Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.
– Benjamin Franklin
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.
– Benjamin Franklin
Remember that credit is money.
– Benjamin Franklin
Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.
– Benjamin Franklin
She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.
– Benjamin Franklin
Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.
– Benjamin Franklin
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.
– Benjamin Franklin
Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.
– Benjamin Franklin
So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a grout at last.
– Benjamin Franklin
Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.
– Benjamin Franklin
The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
– Benjamin Franklin
The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.
– Benjamin Franklin
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
– Benjamin Franklin
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
– Benjamin Franklin
The discontented man finds no easy chair.
– Benjamin Franklin
The doors of wisdom are never shut.
– Benjamin Franklin
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
– Benjamin Franklin
The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.
– Benjamin Franklin
The first mistake in public business is the going into it.
– Benjamin Franklin
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.
– Benjamin Franklin
The greatest monarch on the proudest throne is obliged to sit upon his own arse.
– Benjamin Franklin
The learned fool writes nonsense in better language that the unlearned - but it's still nonsense.
– Benjamin Franklin
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.
– Benjamin Franklin
The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.
– Benjamin Franklin
The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.
– Benjamin Franklin
The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.
– Benjamin Franklin
There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
– Benjamin Franklin
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.
– Benjamin Franklin
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
– Benjamin Franklin
There was never a good war, or a bad peace.
– Benjamin Franklin
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.
– Benjamin Franklin
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
– Benjamin Franklin
Those that won't be counseled can't be helped.
– Benjamin Franklin
Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.
– Benjamin Franklin
Time is money.
– Benjamin Franklin
To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.
– Benjamin Franklin
To err is human; to repent, divine; to persist, devilish.
– Benjamin Franklin
To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.
– Benjamin Franklin
Tomorrow every fault is to be amended; but tomorrow never comes.
– Benjamin Franklin
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.
– Benjamin Franklin
Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.
– Benjamin Franklin
Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.
– Benjamin Franklin
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.
– Benjamin Franklin
We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang seperately.
– Benjamin Franklin
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
– Benjamin Franklin
What has become clear to you since we last met?
– Benjamin Franklin
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
– Benjamin Franklin
When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.
– Benjamin Franklin
When in doubt, don't.
– Benjamin Franklin
When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.
– Benjamin Franklin
When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?
– Benjamin Franklin
When you're finished changing, you're finished.
– Benjamin Franklin
Where liberty is, there is my country.
– Benjamin Franklin
Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
– Benjamin Franklin
Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
– Benjamin Franklin
Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?
– Benjamin Franklin
Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.
– Benjamin Franklin
Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
– Benjamin Franklin
Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.
– Benjamin Franklin
Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.
– Benjamin Franklin
Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
– Benjamin Franklin
Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
– Benjamin Franklin
You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?
– Benjamin Franklin
You may delay, but time will not.
– Benjamin Franklin
Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
– Benjamin Franklin
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.
– Benjamin Franklin
All would live long, but none would be old.
– Benjamin Franklin