Benjamin Franklin citations
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Benjamin Franklin /ˈbɛnd͡ʒəmɪn ˈfɹæŋklɪn/, né le 17 janvier 1706 à Boston et mort le 17 avril 1790 à Philadelphie, est un imprimeur, éditeur, écrivain, naturaliste, inventeur et homme politique américain.

Il participe à la rédaction de la déclaration d'indépendance des États-Unis, dont il est un des signataires, ce qui fait de lui l'un des Pères fondateurs des États-Unis. Pendant la révolution américaine, il négocie en France en tant que diplomate non seulement le traité d'alliance avec les Français, mais aussi le traité de Paris. Délégué de la Convention de Philadelphie, il participe à l'élaboration de la Constitution des États-Unis.

La vie de Benjamin Franklin est en grande partie caractérisée par la volonté d'aider la communauté. La fondation des premiers sapeurs-pompiers volontaires à Philadelphie, la première bibliothèque de prêt des États-Unis et l'invention du poêle à bois à combustion contrôlée illustrent son ambition d'améliorer la qualité de vie et l'accès à l'éducation de ses concitoyens. Avec l'invention du paratonnerre, il parvient à écarter le danger que représentait jusqu'alors ce phénomène naturel.

Fils d'un marchand de suif et de chandelles, Benjamin Franklin mène une carrière d'imprimeur, avant de se retirer du milieu des affaires à l'âge de 42 ans pour entrer en politique. Son ascension sociale – rapportée à travers les nombreuses éditions de son autobiographie – restera longtemps un exemple de réussite par le travail et la discipline. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. janvier 1706 – 17. avril 1790
Benjamin Franklin photo
Benjamin Franklin: 191   citations 1   J'aime

Benjamin Franklin citations célèbres

“Bien faire en faisant ce qui est bon.”

Doing Well by Doing Good.
en
L'un des plus fameux slogans de Benjamin Franklin cité dans la préface par Luc-François Salvador, Chairman and CEO de Sogeti

“Je pense que le meilleur moyen de faire du bien aux pauvres n’est pas de leur rendre la pauvreté moins dure mais de les en sortir.”

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.
en
Tiré de On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor (1766)

“Ceux qui sont prêts à abandonner une liberté fondamentale, pour obtenir temporairement un peu de sécurité, ne méritent ni la liberté ni la sécurité.”

They who can give up essential liberty, to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
en
Franklin cite une lettre de 1755 de l'Assemblée de Pennsylvanie au gouverneur de cet état. Bien qu'elle lui soit souvent attribuée, il n'est pas clairement établi que la phrase soit de lui.

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

Benjamin Franklin: Citations en anglais

“Here Skugg lies snug
As a bug in a rug.”

Letter to Miss Georgiana Shipley (September, 1772); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Epistles

“We are a kind of posterity in respect to them.”

Letter to William Strahan (1745); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Epistles

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

As quoted in Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 22.
Decade unclear
Variante: Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

“Here you would know and enjoy what posterity will say of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.”

Letter to Washington (5 March 1780); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Epistles

“What is the good of a newborn baby?”

Widely attributed response to a questioner doubting the usefulness of hot air balloons. See Seymor L. Chapin, "A Legendary Bon Mot?: Franklin's 'What is the Good of a Newborn Baby?'", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 129:3 (September 1985), pp. 278–290. Chapin argues (pp. 286–287) that the "evidence overwhelmingly suggests that he said something rather different" and that the attributed quotation is "a probably much older adage".
Attributed

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain — and most fools do.”

Attributed in various post-2000 works, but actually Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People p.14 http://books.google.com/books?id=yxfJDVXClucC&pg=PA14&dq=fool, published in 1936. (N.B. Carnegie is quoting Franklin immediately prior to writing this, so attribution could be due to a printing error in some edition).
Misattributed

“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

“"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn." There is no evidence that Franklin said this. Scholars believe the saying comes from the Xunzi.”

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

“That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved; never, that I know of, controverted.”

Letter to Benjamin Vaughan https://books.google.de/books?id=d3UPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA166&dq=maxim, on Blackstone's Ratio (14 March 1785).
Epistles

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

"Apology for Printers" (1730); later in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiographical Writings (1945) edited by Carl Van Doren
1730s

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

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
Source: 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

“[Referring to private hospital funding alone:] That won't work, it will never be enough, good health care costs a lot of money, remembering 'the distant parts of this province' in which 'assistance cannot be procured, but at an expense that neither [the sick-poor] nor their townships can afford.' … '[This] seems essential to the true spirit of Christianity, and should be extended to all in general, whether deserving or undeserving, as far as our power reaches.”

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

“[Freedom is] not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”

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

“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!”

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

“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

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