Quotes by Benjamin Franklin

• Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.
• Beauty and folly are old companions.
• Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
• Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.
• Beware the hobby that eats.
• Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.
• By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
• Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
• Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.
• Creditors have better memories than debtors.
• Diligence is the mother of good luck.
• Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.
• At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
• Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.
• Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
• Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.
• Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.
• Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
• Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.
• Energy and persistence conquer all things.
• Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
• Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
• Distrust and caution are the parents of security.
• Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.
• 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.
• A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
• A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
• A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
• A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
• A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
• A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
• A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
• A penny saved is a penny earned.
• Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
• A small leak can sink a great ship.
• Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
• All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.
• All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.
• All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.
• An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
• And whether you're an honest man, or whether you're a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.
• Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.
• Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
• Applause waits on success.
• As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
• A place for everything, everything in its place.
• The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
• Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
• Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.
• Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
• The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
• The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.
• The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
• Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75.
• The doors of wisdom are never shut.
• Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.
• The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.
• The first mistake in public business is the going into it.
• The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.
• The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
• The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.
• The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.
• The discontented man finds no easy chair.
• Our necessities never equal our wants.
• Necessity never made a good bargain.
• Never confuse motion with action.
• Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.
• Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
• No nation was ever ruined by trade.
• Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.
• One today is worth two tomorrows.
• There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.
• Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.
• Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.
• 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.
• Remember that credit is money.
• She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.
• Observe all men, thyself most.
• When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.
• We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
• 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.
• We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
• Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
• Well done is better than well said.
• The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.
• When in doubt, don't.
• Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.
• When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?
• When you're finished changing, you're finished.
• Where liberty is, there is my country.
• Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
• Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
• Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?
• When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.
• 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.
• Mine is better than ours.
• There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means - either may do - the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.
• There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
• There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
• There was never a good war, or a bad peace.
• They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
• Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.
• Those that won't be counseled can't be helped.
• Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.
• Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
• Time is money.
• To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.
• To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
• To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.
• Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.
• There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
• Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.
• Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?
• He that rises late must trot all day.
• He that speaks much, is much mistaken.
• He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.
• He that won't be counseled can't be helped.
• He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.
• He that's secure is not safe.
• I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.
• Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her.
• He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
• Honesty is the best policy.
• How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.
• Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.
• Hunger is the best pickle.
• I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.
• Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones - with ingratitude.
• He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
• Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.
• 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.
• 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.
• Games lubricate the body and the mind.
• Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
• God helps those who help themselves.
• God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.
• 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.
• Half a truth is often a great lie.
• He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
• He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.
• He that can have patience can have what he will.
• He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.
• He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.
• He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
• He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
• I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.
• Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
• Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.
• It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.
• It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.
• 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.
• It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
• It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
• Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
• I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.
• Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.
• In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.
• Lost time is never found again.
• Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
• Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.
• Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.
• Marriage is the most natural state of man, and... the state in which you will find solid happiness.
• Fatigue is the best pillow.
• Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
• If you desire many things, many things will seem few.
• I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.
• 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.
• I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.
• If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.
• If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
• If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
• Industry need not wish.
• If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.
• In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
• If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.
• If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.
• If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.
• If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
• If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
• In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.
• 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.
• If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
• It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.
• You may delay, but time will not.
• Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
• Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.
• Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
• Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.
• Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.
• Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.
• Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.
• Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
• Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.
• You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?
• Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.
• Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.
• Success is not defined by the goals you achieve, but by the person you become in the process.
• An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
• In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.
• The greatest wealth is health.
• Do not let the fear of failure hold you back from the success awaiting you.
• Do not put off until tomorrow what can be done today, for procrastination is the thief of time.
• Success is not about how high you fly, but how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
• Invest in yourself, it pays the best interest.
• Success will never lower its standards to accommodate your excuses.
• The only way to succeed is to first believe that you can.
• The power of positivity lies in the relentless pursuit of happiness within oneself.
• Do not ask for a lighter burden, ask for broader shoulders.
• Adversity reveals true character; embrace challenges as opportunities for growth.
• Time is the coin of your life. You spend it wisely or waste it foolishly.
• A wise man learns from everyone, a foolish one from none
• Invest in yourself, for it will pay the best interest.
• Persistence and determination will always be the keys to success, for nothing great was ever achieved without them.
• A wise man climbs the mountain of success not to reach the top, but to enjoy the journey along the way.
• Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.
• Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
• Success is not the absence of failures, but the persistence without quit.
• Difficulty is the true test of one's character.
• An investment in knowledge pays the best interest
• Great actions speak volumes louder than great words.
• Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
• Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
• Do not fear the unknown, for that is where greatness awaits to be discovered.
• Courage is the foundation of all great endeavors.
• Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.
• Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.
• Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning
• Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
• Time wasted is never regained.
• Don't put off 'til tomorrow what you can do today
• Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
• For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned
• I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.
• Life is a canvas. Take your brush, and paint the masterpiece that is uniquely you.
• Don't take life too seriously, no one gets out alive
• Invest in yourself; it pays the best interest.
• Wine is constant proof that God loves to see us happy.
• Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.