Printer Famous Quotes

After a midafternoon dinner hosted by Vergennes, Franklin had the honor, if not pleasure, of being allowed to stand next to the queen, the famously haughty Marie-Antoinette, as she played at the gambling tables. Alone among the throng at Versailles, she seemed to have little appreciation for the man who, she had been told, had once been “a printer’s foreman.” As she noted dismissively, a man of that background would never have been able to rise so high in Europe. Franklin would have proudly agreed.

Congress decided to put him on a committee to write a declaration explaining why the colonies were seeking independence. It was back in the days when Congress knew how to appoint really good committees: Franklin and Jefferson and John Adams were on it. They knew that leadership required not merely asserting values, but finding a balance when values conflict. We can see that in the deft editing of the famous sentence that opens the second paragraph of the Declaration. “We hold these truths to be sacred . . . ,” Jefferson had written. On the copy of his draft at the Library of Congress we can see the dark printer’s ink and backslashes of Franklin’s pen as he changes it to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” His point was that our rights would come from rationality and the consent of the governed, not the dictates and dogma of any religion. Jefferson’s draft sentence went on to say that all men have certain inalienable rights. We can see Adams’s hand making an addition: “They are endowed by their Creator” with these inalienable rights. So just in the editing of one half of one sentence we can see how Franklin and his colleagues struck a unifying balance between the grace of divine providence and the role of democratic consent in the founding values of our nation.

Mike [looking at the Beastron 3-D Printer]: Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Kamala: I don't know, are you thinking about how cool it would be to 3D-print gallons of this protein and fill a bunch of empty hairspray bottles with it? Mike: That's exactly what I'm thinking. Kamala: Look out evildoers. Mike: Time to science.

The first B text wasn’t published until 1616. That quarto is similar to yours in that it’s the first to use the now famous woodcut on the title page that shows Faustus raising the Devil while he, Faustus, stays inside his magic circle. That copy is in the British Museum. The next edition to surface is a 1619 one, essentially the same as the one from 1616. There is a single known copy in the hands of an American collector in Baltimore. Then we come to yours, the 1620 edition. Here, curiously, there’s a misprint on the title page – printers were notorious for misprints back then – the word “History” is printed as “Hiftoy”. There’s a single copy in the British Library. We know that three copies have appeared in the saleroom in the past forty years. All of them have been lost to follow-up. Until now, I’d say. Yours is undoubtedly one of them.

Jefferson was distraught. “I was sitting by Dr. Franklin,” he recalled, “who perceived that I was not insensible to these mutilations.” But the process (in addition to in fact improving the great document) had the delightful consequence of eliciting from Franklin, who sought to console Jefferson, one of his most famous little tales. When he was a young printer, a friend starting out in the hat-making business wanted a sign for his shop. As Franklin recounted: He composed it in these words, “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,” with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word “Hatter” tautologous, because followed by the words “makes hats,” which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word “makes” might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats . . . He struck it out. A third said he thought the words “for ready money” were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with; and the inscription now stood, “John Thompson sells hats.” “Sells hats!” says his next friend; “why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word?” It was stricken out, and “hats” followed, the rather as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was reduced ultimately to “John Thompson,” with the figure of a hat subjoined.”37

Franklin, "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."[4] Franklin became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy, writing and publishing Poor Richard's Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was interested in science and technology, and gained international renown for his famous experiments. He played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin & Marshall College and was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations.

A few books are more than printer's ink, more than paper restricting - more than words and pictures. Some books are the gateways into the actual soul of the writer.

At the precocious age of twenty-two Franklin wrote what became one of the most famous epitaphs in that lapidary genre: The Body of B. Franklin, Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms, But the Work shall not be wholly lost, For it will, as he believed, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended By the Author. When the time came, however, he preferred something simpler. In his will he directed that only “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin 1790” adorn the headstone he shared with his dear country Joan. A life as full as Franklin’s could not be captured in a phrase—or a volume. Yet if a few words had to suffice, a few words that summarized his legacy to the America he played such a central role in creating—and that, not incidentally, illustrated his wry, aphoristic style—they were those he uttered upon leaving the final session of the Constitutional Convention. A matron of Philadelphia demanded to know, after four months’ secrecy, what he and the other delegates had produced. “A republic,” he answered, “if you can keep it.