Benjamin Franklin Quotes. [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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piece-it pete
06-29-2005, 12:54 PM
If Washington was the Father of our Country, then Franklin is the Grandfather.

He was already 70 when the revolution started, and was considered instrumental in being France on board. He did NOT like the idea of a bicameral Congress, like Pennslvania he wanted only one house. He felt that the Senate was too much like the House of Lords.

Benjamin Franklin:

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

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.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Clean your finger before you point at my spots.

Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.

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.

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.

God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her.

How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.

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. [pete note: lol]

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.

I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivation of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means.

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.

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no persuasion move thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollity; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

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.

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

The greatest monarch on the proudest throne is obliged to sit upon his own arse.

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.

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

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 all hang together or assuredly we will all hang seperately.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart's the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

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

_______________

One of my favorites:

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

________________

He was a ladies' man, does it show? :D

Pete

topspeed
06-29-2005, 09:07 PM
Good ones. You forgot my favorite.

Give the hardest job to the busiest man.

kexodusc
06-30-2005, 02:44 AM
...and my favorite:

"make that two beers"

dean_martin
06-30-2005, 03:07 AM
Here's one (from memory, might not be exact) -

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.