God helps them that help themselves.
		-- Benjamin Franklin, "Poor Richard's Almanac"
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Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers,
etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these
things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in.
Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a
kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock.  This
proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also
damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in
incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.
		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
		-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.
		-- Benjamin Franklin
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Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
		-- Benjamin Franklin
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To err is human, to repent, divine, to persist, devilish.
		-- Benjamin Franklin
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As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
- Benjamin Franklin
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of 
others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use 
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, 
such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I 
conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it 
appears to me at present".

When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the 
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some 
absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by observing that in 
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.

I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I 
engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I proposed my 
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.  I had 
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily 
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I 
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
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	I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such
as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I conceive",
"I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me
at present".
	When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied
myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him
immediately some absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by
observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right,
but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.
	I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the
conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I
proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.
I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
		-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
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Love your neighbour, yet don't pull down your hedge.
		-- Benjamin Franklin
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Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to
spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to
indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest
person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you
are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other
passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they
have plenty of food and water.
		-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
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The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
		-- Benjamin Franklin.
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An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
		-- Benjamin Franklin
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He that teaches himself has a fool for a master.
		-- Benjamin Franklin
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