Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
By Walter Isaacson
đź“šThe Book in 3 Bullets
Ben Franklin was a pragmatic, frugal man. He believed in thinking things through logically without giving them emotional weight.
He was averse to established elite and arbitrary power. He believed in the ability to move up the social ladder based on work produced and virtuosity.
He thought industriousness and being good to fellow humans was supreme. He also thought that religions were good if they helped to better mankind and to guide people towards living more virtuous lives.
✍️ My Top Quotes
Man is a sociable being, and it is, for aught I know, one of the worst punishments to be excluded from society.
Most people act virtuously not because of inner goodness, but because they are afraid of public censure.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shut afterward.
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Haste makes waste.
Eat to live, and not live to eat.
Love your enemies, for they will tell you your faults.
đź“– Summary & Notes
Ben Franklin was one of 17 children of Josiah Franklin.
Children used to be more of a resource rather than a burden. They helped around the house and shop by handling most menial chores.
As a young apprentice, Franklin became a vegetarian, not for moral and health reasons, but for financial reasons. This allowed him to save money for more books.
A secret to being more revered than resented is to have self-deprecating humor, an unpretentious demeanor, and an unaggressive style in conversation.
Franklin was good at making casual friends, intellectual companions, flirty admirers, but he was less good at nurturing lasting bonds that involved deep personal commitments or emotional relationships, even within his own family.
Deism holds the belief that each individual can best discover the truth about God through reason and studying nature, rather than through blind faith in received doctrines and divine revelation.
Franklin was not religious, but he thought religious practices were beneficial because they encouraged good behavior and a moral society. He thought that God was best served by doing good works and helping others
Franklin was more practical than romantic, a man of the head rather than the heart.
Franklin was not interested in organized religion. Still, he continued to hold some basic religious beliefs, among them the existence of the Deity was doing good to man. He was tolerant toward all sects, particularly those that worked to make the world a better place.
His faith was devoid of sectarian dogma, burning spirituality, deep soul-searching, or a personal relationship with Christ.
He believed that there was one Supreme most perfect being.
He placed little faith in the use of prayers for specific personal requests or miracles.
We shall not be examined by what we thought, but by what we did…that we did well to our fellow creatures.
Franklin’s 12 virtues he thought desirable
Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elation
Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution. Resolve to perform what you should.
Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself (waste nothing)
Industry. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit
Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve
Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring.
The purpose of religion should be to make men better and to improve society, and any sect or creed that did so was fine with Franklin.
Freemasonry, a semisecret fraternal organization based on the ancient rituals and symbols of the stone-cutting guilds, had been founded in London in 1717, and its first Philadelphia lodge cropped up in 1727.
Social mobility was not very common in the eighteenth century. But Franklin proudly made it his mission that a tradesman could rise in the world and stand before kings.
Franklin left his print shop because he was eager to focus his undiminished ambition on other pursuits: science, politics, diplomacy, and statecraft.
Franklin’s scientific inquiries were driven, primarily, by pure curiosity and the thrill of discovery.
Learning how nature acted was more important than knowing the theoretical reasons why.
Franklin was more of a practical experimenter than a systematic theorist.
Franklin was generally nonideological, indeed allergic to anything smacking of dogma.
He had an inbred resistance to established authority. Not awed by rank.
He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and ambition.
Franklin owned a slave couple, but in 1751 he decided to sell them because he found them uneconomical.
He focused more on the uneconomical aspect of owning slaves than the immorality of it.
Later in his life, he became an active abolitionist, who denounced slavery on moral grounds and helped advance the rights of blacks.
On the night of April 18, 1775, a contingent of British redcoats headed north from Boston to arrest the tea party planners Samuel Adams and John Hancock and capture the munitions stockpiled by their supporters. Paul Revere spread the alarm, as did others less famously.
Franklin believed that science should be pursued initially for pure fascination and curiosity, and then practical uses would eventually flow from what was discovered.
Franklin was on the side of religious tolerance rather than evangelical faith. The side of social mobility rather than an established elite. the side of middle-class virtues rather than more ethereal noble aspirations.
He had a genial affection for his wife, but not enough love to prevent him from spending fifteen of the last seventeen years of their marriage an ocean away.
Although a religious faith based on fervor can be inspiring, there is also something admirable about a religious outlook based on humility and openness.
Disentangling morality from theology was an important achievement of the Enlightenment, and Franklin was its avatar in America.
Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make democracies.
Franklin was unwavering in his opposition to arbitrary authority.
He helped to create a new political order in which rights and power were based not on the happenstance of heritage but on merit and virtue and hard work. He rose up the social ladder, from runaway apprentice to dining with kings, in a way that would become quintessentially American.
His focus tended to be on how ordinary issues affect everyday lives, and on how ordinary people could build a better society.