Benjamin Franklin

“You have on hand those things that you need if you have but the wit and wisdom to use them.”

“Those things that hurt, instruct.”

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

“He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows nor judge all he sees.”

“God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.”

“To cease to think creatively is to cease to live”

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.”

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

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”

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

“Never take a wife till thou hast a house(and a fire) to put her in.”

“Quien renuncia a su libertad por seguridad, no merece ni libertad ni seguridad”

“There cannot be good living where there is not good drinking.”

“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”

“So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

“Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.”

“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”

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

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.”

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

“The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”

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

“I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe in that He ought to be whipped from pilar to post and back again for His shameful actions toward Humanity.”

“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move. ”

“A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.”

“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.”

“While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.”

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”

“Glass, China, and Reputation, are easily cracked, and never well mended.”

“He that lieth down with Dogs, shall rise up with Fleas.”

“A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.”

“Happiness consists more in the small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.”

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.”

“Were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint, but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a light-house.[Letter to his wife, 17 July 1757, after narrowly avoiding a shipwreck; often misquoted as "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."]”

“I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.”

“Read much, but not many books.”

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

“I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

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

“After three days houseguests and food begins to stink!”

“whatever you become be good at it ”

“Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart… To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty… and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted.[For the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1789]”

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”

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

“Contentment makes poor men rich, Discontent makes rich men poor.”

“When you are finished changing, you're finished.”

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