Quotes from Benjamin Franklin

Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains; then help hands, for I have no lands;

nothing was useful which was not honest.

We must all hang together or we shall most assuredly all hang separately.

By my rambling digressions, I perceive myself to be grown old. I used to write more methodically, but one does not dress for private company as for a public ball. Perhaps 'tis only negligence.

Industry need not wish, and he who lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains; then help hands, for I have no lands

He that won't be counseled, can't be helped.

The cat in gloves catches no mice. Make hay while the sun shines.

Here in France, you must practice the art of accomplishing much while appearing to accomplish little. (in the John Adams miniseries on HBO)

Of learned Fools I have seen ten times ten, Of unlearned wise men I have seen a hundred.

The body of B. Franklin, Printer; Like the cover of an old book (it's contents torn out, and stript of its lettering and guilding), lies here, food for worms But the work shall not be wholly lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more, in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and amended, by the Author.

In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libeling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country

My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's work.

He that is conscious of a Stink in his Breeches, is jealous of every Wrinkle in another's Nose.

Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves;

The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.

Conviction that it was out Interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our Slipping...

We may make these times better, if we better ourselves.

I am apprehensive, therefore - perhaps too apprehensive - that the Government of these States may in futures times end in a monarchy. But this catastrophe, I think, may be long delayed, if in our proposed system we do not sow the seeds of contention, faction, and tumult, by making our posts of honor places of profit.

On the whole, sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would, with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.

with an alteration in the mode of assessment, which I thought not for

For want of modesty is want of sense.

I experienced, too, the truth of the observation, "that after getting the first hundred pound, it is more easy to get the second," money itself being of a prolific nature.

Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough.