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Benjamin Franklin Quotations

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Benjamin Franklin
1706-1790 (Age at death: 84 approx.)

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705]- April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist, he supported the idea of an American nation. As a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible.Franklin is credited as being foundational to the roots of American values and character, a marriage of the practical and democratic Puritan values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of Henry Steele Commager, "In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin, "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."

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9 Quotation(s) Total:

     Page 1 of 1

Necessity never made a good bargain."

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Benjamin Franklin

Necessity never made a good bargain."

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Benjamin Franklin

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



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Benjamin Franklin

All property, indeed, except the savage's temporary cabin, his bow, his match-coat, and other little acquisitions absolutely necessary for his subsistence, seems to me to be the creature of public convention."

"All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the prope...
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Benjamin Franklin

In the affairs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it.
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Benjamin Franklin

Let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely ford that see the shallows."

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Benjamin Franklin

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself a slave to it.
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Benjamin Franklin

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

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Benjamin Franklin

Who has deceived thee so oft as thyself?"

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Benjamin Franklin

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