Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

Kill no more pigeons than you can eat.

Little boats should keep near shore

A man is not completely born until he is dead.

Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

Moses lifting up his wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh in his chariot overwhelmed with the waters. This motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with. How shall I come to a knowledge of her faults, and whether she has the virtues I imagine she has? Answer. Commend her among her female acquaintances.

Little leaks sink the ship.

I hope...that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.

The best of all medicines is resting and fasting

You have on hand those things that you need if you have but the wit and wisdom to use them.

Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes it.

whatever you become be good at it

...it is prodigious the quantity of good that may be done by one man if he will make a business of it.

The wise man draws more advantage from his enemies than the fool from his friends

After crosses and losses men grow humbler and wiser.

If you want to be rich, think of the savings and get them.

Constant complaint is the poorest sort of pay for all the comforts we enjoy.

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy.

Quacks are the greatest liars in the world except their patients.

The tongue offends and the ears get the cuffing

Success is the residue of planning.

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy.

Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.

I am in the prime of senility.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

Hunger never saw bad bread.

Hereafter, if you should observe an occasion to give your officers and friends a little more praise than is their due, and confess more fault than you can justly be charged with, you will only become the sooner for it, a great captain.

Conceiving God to be the fountain of wisdom, I thought it right and necessary to solicit his assistance for obtaining it.

Love of country is the Mason's deed; world citizenship is his thought.

Lawyers, Preachers, and Tomtits Eggs, there are more of them hatch'd than come to perfection.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

The electrical matter consists of particles extremely subtile, since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom as not to receive any perceptible resistance.

Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money

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.

Hope of gain lessens pain.

He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.

On the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it.

Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.