Top 500 Benjamin Franklin Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

204. “Then plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.”

— Benjamin Franklin

205. “Lend money to an enemy, and thou will gain him, to a friend and thou will lose him.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

207. “The best doctor gives the least medicines.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

209. “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

210. “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

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

213. “Hope of gain lessens pain.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

220. “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

221. “Great talkers, little doers.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

223. “The sleeping fox catches no poultry.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

227. “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

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

231. “Hunger never saw bad bread.”

— Benjamin Franklin

232. “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

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

— Benjamin Franklin

234. “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

— Benjamin Franklin

235. “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

236. “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

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

240. “Genius without education is like silver in the mine.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

242. “Stand firm, don’t flutter!”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

246. “One of the greatest tragedies of life is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.”

— Benjamin Franklin

247. “That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin

249. “I fully agree with General Washington, that we must protect this young nation from an insidious influence and impenetration. The menace, gentlemen, is the Jews.”

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Benjamin Franklin