Quotes from Benjamin Franklin

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

A man is not completely born until he is dead.

A little neglect may breed great mischief.

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

Hope is an essential constituent of human life.

I've striven my whole life for humility, but if I'd ever achieved it, I'd probably be pretty damn proud of that.

A policy of life insurance is the cheapest and safest mode of making a certain provision for one's family.

Life is a kind of chess.

The good or ill hap of a good or ill life, is the good or ill choice of a good or ill wife.

Gaining money by my industry and frugality, I lived very agreeably. . . .

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.

Industry need not wish.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

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

He that sows thorns should never go barefoot.

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: 'This is my country.'

Take one thing with another, and the world is a pretty good sort of a world, and it is our duty to make the best of it, and be thankful.