Benjamin Franklin was a printer before he was a statesman, a scientist, or a diplomat. He understood publication, distribution, and the economics of the written word in ways most of his contemporaries did not. This makes the history of his quotations unusually interesting — because Franklin himself knew exactly which words were likely to travel, and he put many of them to work deliberately.
Poor Richard’s Almanack
From 1732 to 1758, Franklin published Poor Richard’s Almanack under the pen name Richard Saunders. The almanac was a practical publication — weather predictions, calendar information, useful tables — but Franklin used it to distribute aphorisms, and those aphorisms made him famous. He was not always their original author; he borrowed freely from earlier sources, polished them, and gave them wider circulation. In the preface to Poor Richard Improved (1758), he wrote:
“I have… assembled and placed in his Mouth, such of the best Sentences from my former Almanacks, as seem’d proper for a Father’s Instruction to a Son.”
Franklin was candid about this process. He was a compiler and an improver, not always an originator.
What Franklin Actually Said
Several of his most famous lines are genuinely from the Almanack:
- “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” — From Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1735. The sentiment existed before Franklin, but this exact phrasing is his.
- “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” — From a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, 1789. Documented and genuine.
- “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Widely attributed to Franklin, but no documented source in his writings has been found. Attribution is uncertain.
The Founding Father Problem
Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln are the three figures most frequently given invented quotations in American political culture. The reasons are similar in each case: they are figures of enormous symbolic authority, they wrote voluminously (which makes false attribution harder to disprove quickly), and they expressed ideas — self-reliance, democratic ideals, the value of education — that later generations want to see endorsed by historical legitimacy.
The Autobiography
Franklin’s Autobiography, written in sections between 1771 and 1790, is one of the founding documents of American self-improvement literature. It is also where several of his most frequently quoted passages appear in context. He describes his thirteen virtues — temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility — not as a moral code to be admired but as a practical program he tested on himself, with mixed results. The honesty about failure is part of what makes the Autobiography worth reading today.
Verifying Franklin Quotations
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, published by Yale University Press (47 volumes to date), is the definitive scholarly source. The online edition is searchable and free. Before repeating a Franklin quotation, it is worth spending three minutes verifying it there.