Benjamin Franklin quotes - page 28

The world is full of fools and faint hearts and yet everyone has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the affairs, of his neighbor. (Benjamin Franklin)
The most trifling actions that affect a man's credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or at nine at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer but if he sees you at the billiard-table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth Or the Gout will seize you and plague you both. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
Let thy discontents be thy secrets if the world knows them 'twill despise thee and increase them. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
Remember this saying, The good payer is lord of another man's purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
The church the state, and the poor, are 3 daughters which we should maintain, but not portion off. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
Great Beauty, great strength, great Riches, are really truly of no great Use a right Heart exceeds all. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
How much more than is necessary do we spend in Sleep! forgetting that The sleeping Fox catches no Poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the Grave, as Poor Richard says. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
Can sweetening our tea, &c. with sugar, be a circumstance of such absolute necessity? Can the petty pleasure thence arising to the taste, compensate for so much misery produced among our fellow creatures, and such a constant butchery of the human species by this pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men?-Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity! View quote
Benjamin Franklin
Indeed I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory Words, Without Vanity I may say, etc. but some vain thing immediately follow'd. Most People dislike Vanity in others whatever Share they have of it themselves, but I give it fair Quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of Good to the Possessor and to others that are within his Sphere of Action: And therefore in many Cases it would not be quite absurd if a Man were to thank God for his Vanity among the other Comforts of Life. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
All Property indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of publick Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual & the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property of the Publick, who by their Laws have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire & live among Savages. - He can have no right to the Benefits of Society who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. (Benjamin Franklin)
Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the mean time has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers -- but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass? View quote
Benjamin Franklin