Benjamin Franklin Quotes

A great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.

Benjamin Franklin

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Quotes to Explore

• Through the history of rock n' roll, you see lots of bands making the mistake of putting on the tights when they get to arenas. Don't do that.

  

  Patrick Carney The Black Keys
  • History
  • Rock
  • Mistake

• There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.

  

  Ramez Naam
  • Action
  • Worry
  • Optimism

• Within the sphere of steampunk, there seems to be a rapidly growing subsphere of gadgetless 'neo-Victorian' novels, most of which attempt to recapture the romance of the era without all the sociopolitical ugliness.

  

  N. K. Jemisin
  • Growing
  • Without
  • Romance

• One of the things that's interesting is that the PC has always had a huge amount of scalability. It was sort of the wild dog that moved into Australia and killed all the local life because it could just adapt. There used to be these dedicated devices, like dedicated word processors.

  

  Gabe Newell
  • Life
  • Interesting
  • Dog

• No one pays me to be nice.

  

  Aaron Allston
  • Me
  • Nice
  • Pays

• Oh my God, Betty White is actually everything that you would expect her to be like.

  

  Yvette Nicole Brown
  • God
  • You
  • White

• Also, I have found that I really like to work in English. It's very strange because it's exactly the opposite of what I thought it would be like.

  

  Olivier Martinez
  • Work
  • English
  • Thought

• I've played a lot of elegance and refinement, so to do something really down and dirty is a great attraction.

  

  Natalie Dormer
  • Great
  • Down
  • Dirty

• The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

  

  Dale Carnegie
  • Never
  • Boat
  • Dare

• By constant contemplation of excellence, we clear our selfhood of all dross and impurities.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • Excellence
  • Contemplation

• My mother giving birth to me was just like Lady Sybil giving birth, except that there wasn't such a tragic ending.

  

  Jack Whitehall
  • Mother
  • Giving
  • Ending

• I live for the text. It's my job.

  

  Ian Mckellen
  • Live
  • Job
  • Text

• My first YA novel, not many people have read. It's a fickle business. There's a degree of timing and luck involved.

  

  Gayle Forman
  • People
  • Business
  • Luck

• I think a lot of people have a problem with the fact that I've adopted an African child, a child who has a different color skin than I do.

  

  Madonna Breakfast Club
  • People
  • Different
  • Problem

• Age is the first limitation on roles that I've ever had to encounter, and I hit that awhile ago.

  

  Jack Nicholson
  • Age
  • First
  • Ever

• When you're young you don't think, 'This person is going to change your life.' But when you start recording your own songs, it comes back and reminds you.

  

  Fefe Dobson
  • Life
  • Change
  • Start

• Corporatist attitudes against capitalism came to the fore in the 1920s. Corporatists, with their conservative values, hated the invasion of towns and regions by new businesses, upsetting traditional ways, wealth and status.

  

  Edmund Phelps
  • Values
  • Wealth
  • Capitalism

• I like the ideology of there being no such thing as perfection. But I'm of the opinion that I have witnessed perfection at various times, especially in art.

  

  Jack O'Connell
  • Art
  • Opinion
  • Perfection

• I played American when I was, like, fourteen, and I was awful. I cringed the whole way through.

  

  Kaya Scodelario
  • American

• A lot of times, movies that are in the top 10 lists or maybe even win Baftas or Oscars, you then watch them a year later and you go, 'Maybe it wasn't so great.'

  

  Viggo Mortensen
  • Great
  • Movies
  • Win

• Debt collectors like to play on your emotions because they think you'll give in and do something you can't really afford to do. Most of them don't care about you or your situation as long as they get some money.

  

  Dave Ramsey
  • Long
  • Money

• People who think they are free eventually end up slaves to their own desires, and those who give their freedom away to the only One you can trust with that freedom eventually get it back.

  

  Philip Yancey
  • People
  • Up
  • Free

• My father's mother was a secular Jew who died in Auschwitz. I only found out as an adult because my father never talked about it. He was a secularist and never defined himself in ethnic terms - partly, I think, because he was scared; partly out of the habit of not talking of such things; partly because he didn't like being defined by other people.

  

  Pawel Pawlikowski
  • People
  • Mother
  • Father

• A great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.

  

  Benjamin Franklin
  • Great