Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklinwas one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth17 January 1706
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
Benjamin Franklin quotes about
Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious, and happy.
Here you would know, and enjoy, what prosperity will way of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.
By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be growing old.
Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.
Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended
If the elbow had been placed closer to the hand, the forearm would have been too short to bring the glass to the mouth; and if it had been closer to the shoulder, the forearm would have been so long that it would have carried the glass beyond the mouth.
A fish is a sock for a fish skeleton.
We may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport.
Be cheerful -- the problems that worry us most are those that never arrive.
A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law
That 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.
Anyone willing to give up liberty in exchange for security deserves neither.
We believe that there is one economic lesson which our twentieth century experience has demonstrated conclusively-that America can no more survive and grow without big business than it can survive and grow without small business.... the two are interdependent. You cannot strengthen one by weakening the other, and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the legs of a giant.
Marry your son when you will, but you daughter when you can.