Benjamin Franklin

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

If principle is good for anything, it is worth living up to.

Better slip with foot than tongue.

Indeed, when religious people quarrel about religion, or hungry people quarrel about victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.

The things of this world take up too much of my time, of which indeed I have too little left, to undertake anything like a reformation in religion.

A fine genius in his own country is like gold in the mine.

Slavery is ...an atrocious debasement of human nature.

In going on with these Experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig'd to destroy! If there is no other Use discover'd of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble.

Laws without morals are in vain.

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

You and I were long friends: you are now my enemy, and I am yours.

Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.

To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.

Temperance puts wood on the fire, meal in the barrel, flour in the tub, money in the purse, credit in the country, contentment in the house, clothes on the back, and vigor in the body.

The cat in gloves catches no mice.

The rotten apple spoils his companion.

Wise men learn by others' harms, fools scarcely by their own.

He that hath a calling, hath an office of profit and honor.

Historians relate not so much what is done as what they would have believed.

Praise to the undeserving is severe satire.

An education is the investment with the greatest returns.