“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Misattributed to various people, including Albert Einstein and Mark Twain. An early occurrence was used as a teaching reference at University of California, Irvine in social science lectures in the later 1960s. Also found in a 1981 text from Narcotics Anonymous.
Misattributed
Speech in the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 17, 1787); reported in James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E. H. Scott (1893), p. 741.
Constitutional Convention of 1787
Additional information may be read at the following websites:
http://dakinburdick.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/tell-me-and-i-forget/
http://www.quora.com/History/Where-and-when-did-Benjamin-Franklin-say-Tell-me-and-I-forget-teach-me-and-I-may-remember-involve-me-and-I-learn
http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/word-badger/2013/mar/24/whose-quote-really/
Misattributed
“To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.”
This has been widely attributed to Franklin since the 1940s, but is not found in any of his works. The language is not Franklin's, nor that of his time. It does paraphrase a portion of something he wrote in 1732 under the name Alice Addertongue:
If I have never heard Ill of some Person, I always impute it to defective Intelligence; for there are none without their Faults, no, not one. If she be a Woman, I take the first Opportunity to let all her Acquaintance know I have heard that one of the handsomest or best Men in Town has said something in Praise either of her Beauty, her Wit, her Virtue, or her good Management. If you know any thing of Humane Nature, you perceive that this naturally introduces a Conversation turning upon all her Failings, past, present, and to come.
Misattributed
Petition from the Pennsylvania Society (1790)
Letter to Jane Mecom, 23 February 1769 http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=16&page=050a
Epistles
Letter to Benjamin Vaughan https://books.google.de/books?id=d3UPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA166&dq=maxim, on Blackstone's Ratio (14 March 1785).
Epistles
"Apology for Printers" (1730); later in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiographical Writings (1945) edited by Carl Van Doren
1730s
This was first used by Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its " Reply to the Governor https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-06-02-0107" (11 Nov. 1755)
This quote was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759); the book was published by Franklin; its author was Richard Jackson, but Franklin did claim responsibility for some small excerpts http://www.philaprintshop.com/rarephila.html that were used in it.
In 1775 Franklin again used this phrase in his contribution to Massachusets Conference https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-21-02-0269 (Objections to Barclay’s Draft Articles of February 16.) - "They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
An earlier variant by Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanack (1738): "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
Many paraphrased derivatives of this have often become attributed to Franklin:
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.
Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.
Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.
1750s
Zdroj: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-06-02-0107#BNFN-01-06-02-0107-fn-0005
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
According to a Snopes message board http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=278, the earliest known reference dates to the late 1990s.
Misattributed
letter to Sarah Bache (26 January 1784).
Epistles
In 1751, Franklin's friend, Dr. Thomas Bond, convinced him to champion the building of a public hospital. Through his hard work and political ingenuity, Franklin brought the skeptical legislature to the table, bargaining his way to use public money to build what would become Pennsylvania Hospital. Franklin proposed an institution that would provide — 'free of charge' —the finest health care to everybody, 'whether inhabitants of the province or strangers,' even to the 'poor diseased foreigners"' (referring to the immigrants of German stock that the colonials tended to disparage and discriminate). Countering the Assembly's insistence that the hospital be built only with private donations, Franklin made the above statement. Various articles by Franklin supporting his Appeal for the Hospital in The Pennsylvania Gazette (1751) as quoted in Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan.
“God made beer because he loves us and wants us to be happy.”
The quote, and its many variants, has been widely attributed to Franklin; however, there has never been an authoritative source for the quote, and research http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:4EV3RmSwk04J:listserv.dom.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe%3FA2%3Dind0507%26L%3Dstumpers-l%26O%3DD%26P%3D31953+abbe+morellet+franklin+wine&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3 indicates that it is very likely a misquotation of Franklin's words regarding wine: "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." (see sourced section above for a more extensive quotation of this passage from a letter to André Morellet), written in 1779.
Misattributed
This is actually from an essay "On Government No. I" that appeared in Franklin's paper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, on 1 April 1736. The author was John Webbe. He wrote about the privileges enjoyed under British rule,
:Thank God! we are in the full enjoyment of all these privileges. But can we be taught to prize them too much? or how can we prize them equal to their value, if we do not know their intrinsic worth, and that they are not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature?
Misattributed
Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (13 November 1789)
First published in The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin (1817) p.266 https://books.google.de/books?id=jY8EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA266&dq=constitution
The Yale Book of Quotations quotes “‘Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes,” from Christopher Bullock, The Cobler of Preston (1716). The YBQ also quotes “Death and Taxes, they are certain,” from Edward Ward, The Dancing Devils (1724).
Epistles
“Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers.”
This is actually from the musical play 1776 (1969) by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, in which Franklin is portrayed as saying this.
Misattributed
Speech to the Constitutional Convention (28 June 1787); Manuscript notes by Franklin preserved in the Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006642.jpg
Constitutional Convention of 1787
“If we fail to prepare, we prepare to fail.”
Fail to prepare; prepare to fail.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Attributed to Franklin in Julita Agustin-Israel, Lakas ng Loob, 1996, p. 53 https://books.google.com/books?id=2Z59AAAAMAAJ&q=prepare; there is no evidence that he coined any forms of this quote.
Misattributed
"Some Good Whig Principles. Declaration of those Rights of the Community of Great Britain, without which they cannot be Free," as quoted in Memoirs of the Llife and Writings of Benjamin Franklin https://books.google.com/books?id=jmMFAAAAQAAJ (1818) by Benjamin Franklin and William Temple Franklin
Attributed
Letter to London merchant Peter Collinson (9 May 1753); reported in Labaree: "Papers of Benjamin Franklin", vol 4, pp 481-482.
Epistles