1. Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

- Benjamin Franklin

2. We need a revolution every 200 years, because all governments become stale and corrupt after 200 years.

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Benjamin Franklin

4. There are in life real evils enough, and it is folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones; it is time enough when the real ones arrive.

- Benjamin Franklin

5. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.

- Benjamin Franklin

6. Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sun-dial in the shade?

- Benjamin Franklin

7. Fear to do ill, and you need fear naught else.

- Benjamin Franklin

8. Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

- Benjamin Franklin

9. It is a common error in friends, when they would extol their friends, to make comparisons, and to depreciate the merits of others.

- Benjamin Franklin

10. By the collision of different sentiments, sparks of truth are struck out, and political light is obtained. The different factions, which at present divide us, aim all at the public good; the differences are only about the various modes of promoting it.

- Benjamin Franklin

11. Man and woman have each of them qualities and tempers in which the other is deficient, and which in union contribute to the common felicity.

- Benjamin Franklin

12. A new truth is a truth, an old error is an error.

- Benjamin Franklin

13. This is sometimes of great use.

- Benjamin Franklin

14. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

- Benjamin Franklin

15. When I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring favors, but as paying debts. I have received much kindness from men to whom I shall never have an opportunity of making the least direct returns; and numberless mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our services. Those kindnesses from men I can, therefore, only return on their fellow-men, and I can only show my gratitude for those mercies from God by a readiness to help His other children.

- Benjamin Franklin

16. The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest.

- Benjamin Franklin

17. If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.

- Benjamin Franklin

18. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

- Benjamin Franklin

19. Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.

- Benjamin Franklin

20. No nation was ever ruined by trade.

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Benjamin Franklin

22. There is much difference between imitating a man and counterfeiting him.

- Benjamin Franklin

23. If a sound body and a sound mind, which is as much as to say health and virtue, are to be preferred before all other considerations, ought not men, in choosing a business either for themselves or children, to refuse such as are unwholesome for the body, and such as make a man too dependent, too much obliged to please others, and too much subjected to their humors in order to be recommended and get a livelihood?

- Benjamin Franklin

24. If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

- Benjamin Franklin

25. I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.

- Benjamin Franklin

26. When Franklin drew the lightning from the clouds, he little dreamed that in the evolution of science his discovery would illuminate the torch of Liberty for France and America. The rays from this beacon, lighting this gateway to the continent, will welcome the poor and the persecuted with the hope and promise of homes and citizenship.

- Benjamin Franklin

27. My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin—the figure in American history most worthy of emulation. Franklin is my ideal of a whole man. Where are the life-size—or even pint-size—Benjamin Franklins of today?

- Benjamin Franklin

28. Men are subject to various inconveniences merely through lack of a small share of courage, which is a quality very necessary in the common occurrences of life, as well as in a battle. How many impertinences do we daily suffer with great uneasiness, because we have not courage enough to discover our dislike.

- Benjamin Franklin

29. Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

- Benjamin Franklin

30. Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.

- Benjamin Franklin

31. Security without liberty is called prison.

- Benjamin Franklin

32. When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.

- Benjamin Franklin

33. Whilst I am writing to a Philosopher and a Friend, I can scarcely forget that I am also writing to the greatest Statesman of the present, or perhaps of any century, who spread the happy contagion of Liberty among his countrymen.

- Benjamin Franklin

34. Would you live with ease, do what you ought and not what you please.

- Benjamin Franklin

35. The best of all medicines are rest and fasting.

- Benjamin Franklin

36. I would advise you to read with a pen in hand, and enter in a little book short hints of what you find that is curious, or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such particulars in your memory.

- Benjamin Franklin

37. There are two ways of being happy — we may either diminish our wants or augment our means — either will do, the result is the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means.

- Benjamin Franklin

38. Don’t misinform your Doctor nor your Lawyer.

- Benjamin Franklin

39. God heals, and the Doctor takes the Fees.

- Benjamin Franklin

40. When you incline to have new clothes, look first well over the old ones, and see if you cannot shift with them another year, either by scouring, mending, or even patching if necessary. Remember, a patch on your coat, and money in your pocket, is better and more creditable, than a writ on your back, and no money to take it off.

- Benjamin Franklin

41. I don’t believe in stereotypes. I prefer to hate people on a more personal basis.

- Benjamin Franklin

42. The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all others, charity.

- Benjamin Franklin

43. The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

- Benjamin Franklin

44. If you are active and prosperous, or young, or in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are wise, you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.

- Benjamin Franklin

45. Common sense is something that everyone needs, few have, and none think they lack.

- Benjamin Franklin

46. Life, like a dramatic piece, should not only be conducted with regularity, but it should finish handsomely.

- Benjamin Franklin

47. Energy and persistence conquer all things.

- Benjamin Franklin

48. Employ your time well, if you mean to get leisure.

- Benjamin Franklin

49. Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.

- Benjamin Franklin

50. Most men die from the neck up at age twenty-five because they stop dreaming.

- Benjamin Franklin

51. I never saw an oft-removed tree, nor yet an oft-removed family, that throve so well as those that settled be.

- Benjamin Franklin

52. He that falls in love with himself, will have no Rivals.

- Benjamin Franklin

53. When there is so much to be done for yourself, your family, and your country, be up by peep of day! Let not the sun look down and say, ‘Inglorious here he lies!’

- Benjamin Franklin

54. One today is worth two tomorrows.

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Benjamin Franklin

56. Be not sick too late, nor well too soon.

- Benjamin Franklin

57. Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

- Benjamin Franklin

58. To expect people to be good, to be just, to be temperate, etc., without showing them how they should become so, seems like the ineffectual charity mentioned by the apostle, which consisted in saying to the hungry, the cold and the naked, be ye fed, be ye warmed, be ye clothed, without showing them how they should get food, fire or clothing.

- Benjamin Franklin

59. Well done is better than well said.

- Benjamin Franklin

60. If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.

- Benjamin Franklin

61. The most trifling actions of a man, in my opinion, as well as the smallest features and lineaments of the face give a nice observer some notion of his mind.

- Benjamin Franklin

62. He’s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines.

- Benjamin Franklin

63. We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.

- Benjamin Franklin

64. Necessity never made a good bargain.

- Benjamin Franklin

65. Hope and faith may be more firmly built upon charity, than charity upon faith and hope.

- Benjamin Franklin

66. 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.

- Benjamin Franklin

67. As an answer to those who are in the habit of saying to every new fact, “What is its use?” Dr. Franklin says to such, “What is the use of an infant?” The answer of the experimentalist would be, “Endeavour to make it useful.

- Benjamin Franklin

68. Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout.

- Benjamin Franklin

69. There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

- Benjamin Franklin

70. After all, wedlock is the natural state of man. A bachelor is not a complete human being. He is like the odd half of a pair of scissors, which has not yet found its fellow, and therefore is not even half so useful as they might be together.

- Benjamin Franklin

71. To lengthen thy Life, lessen thy Meals.

- Benjamin Franklin

72. Eat to live, and not live to eat.

- Benjamin Franklin

73. In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

- Benjamin Franklin

74. It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

- Benjamin Franklin

75. It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent.

- Benjamin Franklin

76. If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some; for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.

- Benjamin Franklin

77. A fat kitchen makes a lean will.

- Benjamin Franklin

78. To the generous mind the heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when it is not in our power to repay it.

- Benjamin Franklin

79. People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

- Benjamin Franklin

80. Our opinions are not in our own power; they are formed and governed much by circumstances that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistible.

- Benjamin Franklin

81. The art of getting riches consists very much in thrift. All men are not equally qualified for getting money, but it is in the power of every one alike to practice this virtue.

- Benjamin Franklin

82. The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others, than showing a great deal yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with his own facetiousness and ingenuity, will the sooner come into it again.

- Benjamin Franklin

83. Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

- Benjamin Franklin

84. Where liberty is, there is my country.

- Benjamin Franklin

85. Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.

- Benjamin Franklin

86. To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

- Benjamin Franklin

87. Wink at small faults; remember thou hast great ones.

- Benjamin Franklin

88. Those that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.

- Benjamin Franklin

89. The worship of God is a duty; the hearing and reading of sermons may be useful; but if men rest in hearing and praying, as too many do, it is as if a tree should value itself in being watered and putting forth leaves, tho’ it never produced any fruit.

- Benjamin Franklin

90. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

- Benjamin Franklin

91. 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.

- Benjamin Franklin

92. A great talker may be no fool, but he is one that relies on him.

- Benjamin Franklin

93. Having been poor is no shame, being ashamed of it is.

- Benjamin Franklin

94. The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

- Benjamin Franklin

95. The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war. They that are on their guard, and appear ready to receive their adversaries, are in much less danger of being attacked, than the supine, secure, and negligent.

- Benjamin Franklin

96. Some, to make themselves considerable, pursue learning; others grasp at wealth; some aim at being thought witty; and others are only careful to make the most of a handsome person; but what is wit, or wealth, or form, or learning, when compared with virtue? It is true we love the handsome, we applaud the learned, and we fear the rich and powerful; but we even worship and adore the virtuous.

- Benjamin Franklin

97. Don’t go to the doctor with every distemper, nor to the lawyer with every quarrel, nor to the pot for every thirst.

- Benjamin Franklin

98. Creditors have better memories than debtors.

- Benjamin Franklin

99. God helps them who help themselves.

- Benjamin Franklin

100. I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep.

- Benjamin Franklin