Benjamin Franklin Quotes About Science
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Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
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And we daily in our experiments electrise bodies plus or minus, as we think proper. [These terms we may use till your Philosophers give us better.] To electrise plus or minus, no more needs to be known than this, that the parts of the Tube or Sphere, that are rubb'd, do, in the Instant of Friction, attract the Electrical Fire, and therefore take it from the Thin rubbing; the same parts immediately, as the Friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received, to any Body that has less.
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What is the use of a new-born child ?
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Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
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Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, & sloth; Or the Gout will seize you and plague you both.
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An iron rod being placed on the outside of a building from the highest part continued down into the moist earth, in any direction strait or crooked, following the form of the roof or other parts of the building, will receive the lightning at its upper end, attracting it so as to prevent it's striking any other part; and, affording it a good conveyance into the earth, will prevent its damaging any part of the building.
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I say it is impossible that so sensible a people [citizens of Paris], under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.
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Let the experiment be made.
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Certainlie these things agree, The Priest, the Lawyer, & Death all three: Death takes both the weak and the strong. The lawyer takes from both right and wrong, And the priest from living and dead has his Fee.
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Some men grow mad by studying much to know, But who grows mad by studying good to grow.
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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.
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To inquisitive minds like yours and mine the reflection that the quantity of human knowledge bears no proportion to the quantity of human ignorance must be in one view rather pleasing, viz., that though we are to live forever we may be continually amused and delighted with learning something new.
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He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of most medicines.
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A fat kitchin, a lean Will.
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What science can there be more noble, more excellent, more useful for men, more admirably high and demonstrative, than this of mathematics?
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Use now and then a little Exercise a quarter of an Hour before Meals, as to swing a Weight, or swing your Arms about with a small Weight in each Hand; to leap, or the like, for that stirs the Muscles of the Breast.
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A new truth is a truth, an old error is an error.
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A Man of Knowledge like a rich Soil, feeds If not a world of Corn, a world of Weeds.
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Wouldst thou enjoy a long Life, a healthy Body, and a vigorous Mind, and be acquainted also with the wonderful Works of God? labour in the first place to bring thy Appetite into Subjection to Reason.
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I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
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I have never seen the Philosopher's Stone that turns lead into Gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a Man's Gold into Lead.
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Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.
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Benjamin Franklin
- Born: January 17, 1706
- Died: April 17, 1790
- Occupation: Founding Father of the United States