Top 500 Benjamin Franklin Quotes (2023 Update)
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201. “How do you become better tomorrow? By improving yourself, the world is made better. Be not afraid of growing too slowly. Be afraid of standing still. Forget your mistakes, but remember what they taught you. So how do you become better tomorrow? By becoming better today.”

— Benjamin Franklin

202. “Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues.”

— Benjamin Franklin

203. “To be humble to superiors is a duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.”

— Benjamin Franklin

204. “Hope of gain lessens pain.”

— Benjamin Franklin

205. “Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.”

— Benjamin Franklin

206. “He that cannot obey, cannot command.”

— Benjamin Franklin

207. “Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.”

— Benjamin Franklin

208. “Creditors have better memories than debtors.”

— Benjamin Franklin

209. “The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.”

— Benjamin Franklin

210. “It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”

— Benjamin Franklin

211. “Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.”

— Benjamin Franklin

212. “Moderation in all things – including moderation.”

— Benjamin Franklin

213. “Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure; nothing more bondage than too much liberty.”

— Benjamin Franklin

214. “Where there’s no law, there’s no bread.”

— Benjamin Franklin

215. “At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.”

— Benjamin Franklin

216. “I would rather have it said, ‘He lived usefully,’ than, ‘He died rich.’”

— Benjamin Franklin

217. “Great talkers, little doers.”

— Benjamin Franklin

218. “The longer I live the more convinced I become that God governs in the affairs of men. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance.”

— Benjamin Franklin

219. “The sleeping fox catches no poultry.”

— Benjamin Franklin

220. “Critics are our friends, they show us our faults.”

— Benjamin Franklin

221. “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.”

— Benjamin Franklin

222. “I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of Faults than I had imagined, but I had the Satisfaction of seeing them diminish.”

— Benjamin Franklin

223. “Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.”

— Benjamin Franklin

224. “The doors of wisdom are never shut.”

— Benjamin Franklin

225. “A little neglect may breed great mischief.”

— Benjamin Franklin

226. “Hunger never saw bad bread.”

— Benjamin Franklin

227. “A virtuous heretic shall be saved before a wicked Christian.”

— Benjamin Franklin

228. “If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to a purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.”

— Benjamin Franklin

229. “The handshake of the host affects the taste of the roast.”

— Benjamin Franklin

230. “And where is the Prince who can afford to so cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds, might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief, before a force could be brought together to repel them?”

— Benjamin Franklin

231. “Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot.”

— Benjamin Franklin

232. “A Man of Knowledge like a rich Soil, feeds If not a world of Corn, a world of Weeds.”

— Benjamin Franklin

233. “Get what you can, and what you get hold; ’tis the Stone that will turn all your Lead into Gold.”

— Benjamin Franklin

234. “Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants.”

— Benjamin Franklin

235. “Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes it.”

— Benjamin Franklin

236. “If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.”

— Benjamin Franklin

237. “Stand firm, don’t flutter!”

— Benjamin Franklin

238. “I fear the man who drinks water and so remembers this morning what the rest of us said last night.”

— Benjamin Franklin

239. “A lie stands on one leg, truth on two.”

— Benjamin Franklin

240. “Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who kept their swords.”

— Benjamin Franklin

241. “Thinking aloud is a habit which is responsible for most of mankind’s misery.”

— Benjamin Franklin

242. “It is a strange anomaly that men could be careful to insure their houses, their ships, their merchandise, and yet neglect to insure their lives – surely the most important of all to their families, and more subject to loss.”

— Benjamin Franklin

243. “The way to be safe is never to be secure.”

— Benjamin Franklin

244. “Without justice, courage is weak.”

— Benjamin Franklin

245. “Death takes no bribes.”

— Benjamin Franklin

246. “The man who does things makes mistakes, but he doesn’t make the biggest mistake of all-doing nothing.”

— Benjamin Franklin

247. “He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.”

— Benjamin Franklin

248. “It is the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.”

— Benjamin Franklin

249. “To err is human, to repent divine; to persist devilish.”

— Benjamin Franklin

250. “Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious, and happy.”

— Benjamin Franklin