Rich Franklin Quotes

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

Contentment makes poor men rich, Discontent makes rich men poor.

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.

Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the be.

To cut 1930s jobless, FDR taxed corps and rich. Govt used money to hire many millions. Worked then; would now again. Why no debate on that?

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

Great beauty, great strength, and great riches are really and truly of no great use; a right heart exceeds all

The riches of a country are to be valued by the quantity of labor its inhabitants are able to purchase, and not by the quantity of silver and gold they possess.” The

In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words: industry and frugality. Waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he can, will certainly become rich.

There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means- either will do- the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.

Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, "Give me masturbation or give me death." Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, "To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion." In another place this experienced observer has said, "There are times when I prefer it to sodomy." Robinson Crusoe says, "I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art." Queen Elizabeth said, "It is the bulwark of virginity." Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, "A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush." The immortal Franklin has said, "Masturbation is the best policy." Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--"old masters," I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, "Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse." Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--"None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.

Despite the pecuniary spirit of Poor Richard’s sayings and the penny-saving reputation they later earned Franklin, he did not have the soul of an acquisitive capitalist. “I would rather have it said,” he wrote his mother, ‘He lived usefully,’ than, ‘He died rich.’ 

The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.

F. Franklin the Fourth has a job with a firm rich in heritage, money and pretentiousness, a firm vastly superior to Brodnax and Speer. His sidekicks at the moment are W. Harper Whittenson, an arrogant little snot who will, thankfully, leave Memphis and practice with a mega-firm in Dallas; J. Townsend Gross, who has accepted a position with another huge firm; and James Straybeck, a sometimes friendly sort who's suffered three years of law school without an initial to place before his name or numerals to stick after it. With such a short name, his future as a big-firm lawyer is in jeopardy. I doubt if he'll make it.

From the end of the World War twenty-one years ago, this country, like many others, went through a phase of having large groups of people carried away by some emotion--some alluring, attractive, even speciously inspiring, public presentation of a nostrum, a cure-all. Many Americans lost their heads because several plausible fellows lost theirs in expounding schemes to end barbarity, to give weekly handouts to people, to give everybody a better job--or, more modestly, for example, to put a chicken or two in every pot--all by adoption of some new financial plan or some new social system. And all of them burst like bubbles. Some proponents of nostrums were honest and sincere, others--too many of them--were seekers of personal power; still others saw a chance to get rich on the dimes and quarters of the poorer people in our population. All of them, perhaps unconsciously, were capitalizing on the fact that the democratic form of Government works slowly. There always exists in a democratic society a large group which, quite naturally, champs at the bit over the slowness of democracy; and that is why it is right for us who believe in democracy to keep the democratic processes progressive--in other words, moving forward with the advances in civilization. That is why it is dangerous for democracy to stop moving forward because any period of stagnation increases the numbers of those who demand action and action now.

it is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to swell in order to equal the ox.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”79

I would rather have it said, 'He lived usefully,' than, 'He died rich.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion

The Indies have not made Spain rich, because her outgoes are greater than her incomes.

He buys Playboy magazines and looks through them once, then gives them to me. That’s what it’s like to be rich. Here’s what it’s like to be poor. Your wife leaves you because you can’t find a job because there aren’t any jobs to find. You empty the jar of pennies on the mantel to buy cigarettes. You hate to answer the phone; it can’t possibly be good news. When your friends invite you out, you don’t go. After a while, they stop inviting. You owe them money, and sometimes they ask for it. You tell them you’ll see what you can scrape up. Which is this: nothing.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” And as Ramit Sethi said, “Let others debate minutiae—all you need to do is open an investment account at a discount brokerage. Sucka.

If you would be wealthy think of saving as well as getting: The Indies have not made Spain rich because her outgoes are greater than her incomes. Women and wine, game and deceit make the wealth small and the wants great.

Sure, I was poor. But barbecue has never been a rich man’s pleasure. It’s always been a culture of thrift. It’s a poor, rural cuisine based on the leanest, throwaway cuts of the animal being cooked until edible with a fuel that can be picked up off the ground (at least it used to be).

Another view of the Constitution was put forward early in the twentieth century by the historian Charles Beard (arousing anger and indignation, including a denunciatory editorial in the New York Times). He wrote in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution: Inasmuch as the primary object of a government, beyond the mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government. In short, Beard said, the rich must, in their own interest, either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates. Beard applied this general idea to the Constitution, by studying the economic backgrounds and political ideas of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution. He found that a majority of them were lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, that half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that forty of the fifty-five held government bonds, according to the records of the Treasury Department. Thus, Beard found that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds. Four groups, Beard noted, were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, men without property. And so the Constitution did not reflect the interests of those groups. He wanted to make it clear that he did not think the Constitution was written merely to benefit the Founding Fathers personally, although one could not ignore the $150,000 fortune of Benjamin Franklin, the connections of Alexander Hamilton to wealthy interests through his father-in-law and brother-in-law, the great slave plantations of James Madison, the enormous landholdings of George Washington. Rather, it was to benefit the groups the Founders represented, the “economic interests they understood and felt in concrete, definite form through their own personal experience.

In all our cares about worldly treasures, let us steadily bear in mind that riches possessed by children who do not truly serve God are likely to prove snares that may more grievously entangle them in that spirit of selfishness and exaltation which stands in opposition to real peace and happiness, and renders those who submit to the influence of it enemies to the cross of Christ.

Some to make themselves considerable pursue Learning, others grasp at Wealth, some aim at being thought witty, and others are only careful to make the most of an handsome Person; But what is Wit, or Wealth, or Form, or Learning when compar’d with Virtue? ’Tis true, we love the handsome, we applaud the Learned, and we fear the Rich and Powerful; but we even Worship and adore the Virtuous.

Subtract everything inessential from America and what's left? Geography and political philosophy, V says. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The Federalist Papers. --I'd say geography and mythology, James says. Our legends. He gives examples, talks about Columbus sailing past the edge of the world, John Smith at Jamestown and Puritans at Plymouth Rock, conquering the howling wilderness. Benjamin Franklin going from rags to riches with the help of a little slave trading, Frederick Douglass escaping to freedom, the assassination of Lincoln, annexing the West, All those stories that tell us who we are---stories of exploration, freedom, slavery, and always violence. We keep clutching those things, or at least worn-out images of them, like idols we can't quit worshipping.

Sassafras had never wanted to weave, she just couldn't help it. There was something about the feel of raw fleece and finished threads and dainty patterned pieces that was as essential to her as dancing to Carmen De Lavallade, or singing to Aretha Franklin. Her mama had done it, and her mama before that; and making cloth was the only tradition Sassafras inherited that gave her a sense of womanhood that was rich and sensuous, not tired and stingy.

The absence of life is not the same as material privation: we will never again see the same soul occupying the same space. The world refers to them as pets, but that is what we do, not really what they are. Affection pays for itself in proportion to the love we offer, and if the love we lavished on him was any indication, we are inconsolable. The suffering is more on our side now, for he led an enormously happy and productive life, and we are left to remember and agonize. It is all wretchedness now. Grief is the currency for death, leaving us in emotional debt perhaps forever, but love is the tax we happily pay toward the investment of another's company, and we would all rather pay it and be happy and poor than be rich in a friendless life. He is gone, and we are now beholden to him, but we are so much happier for his having been here than we deserve to be. On the death of Ted, beloved cat

1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe. 2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action—the most amiable excellence in a rational being. 3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.

In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become rich, if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavours, doth not, in his wise providence, otherwise determine.

vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone considered; that it was, therefore, everyone’s interest to be virtuous who wished to be happy even in this world; and I should, from this circumstance (there being always in the world a number of rich merchants, nobility, states, and princes, who have need of honest instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so rare), have endeavored to convince young persons that no qualities were so likely to make a poor man’s fortune as those of probity and integrity.

There are many foolish and unstable men who say, "See what a prosperous life that man hath, how rich and how great he is, how powerful, how exalted." But lift up thine eyes to the good things of heaven, and thou shalt see that all these worldly things are nothing, they are utterly uncertain, yea, they are wearisome, because they are never possessed without care and fear. The happiness of man lieth not in the abundance of temporal things but a moderate portion sufficeth him. Our life upon the earth is verily wretchedness. The more a man desireth to be spiritual, the more bitter doth the present life become to him; because he the better

In this piece it was my design to explain and enforce this doctrine, that vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone considered; that it was, therefore, everyone’s interest to be virtuous who wished to be happy even in this world; and I should, from this circumstance (there being always in the world a number of rich merchants, nobility, states, and princes, who have need of honest instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so rare), have endeavored to convince young persons that no qualities were so likely to make a poor man’s fortune as those of probity and integrity. My

In 1818, five-year-old Thomas Alexander Mellon emigrated with his family from Northern Ireland to Pennsylvania. Inspired to seek riches by The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas studied hard and became a lawyer, and then a judge. He saved his money, bought vast stretches of downtown Pittsburgh real estate, and opened T. Mellon and Sons Bank, where he placed a life-size statue of his hero, Ben Franklin, above the door. In 1890, Thomas gave control of the bank to his son Andrew. Andrew transformed the bank into the Mellon National Bank, and as the family fortune swelled, he invested in other industries, too. Some of the investments became Gulf Oil, Alcoa, and Union Steel. Over time,

From 2000, Fannie and Freddie’s appetite for sub-prime loans increased markedly every year, encouraging a rich harvest of increasingly crazy loans by mortgage originators to supply this appetite. House-builders, lenders, mortgage brokers, Wall Street underwriters, legal firms, housing charities and pressure groups like ACORN all benefited. Taxpayers did not. By the early 2000s, Fannie and Freddie were well intertwined with politicians, donating rich campaign contributions especially to Congressional Democrats, and giving rewarding jobs to politicians – Clinton’s former Budget Director Franklin Raines would pocket $100 million from his brief spell in charge of Fannie. Between 1998 and 2008, Fannie and Freddie spent $175 million lobbying Congress.

He glanced back at his ship, and a sigh escaped his lips, his heart fraught with the appreciation and melancholy that understanding his own situation must evince. His place as Captain of such a crew was as evanescent as the rest of life, and while they were all collected together now, being of the same character, the same mind, having the same predilections and ambitions, there was no saying when it might be over. He might be called away on urgent business, or his crew might grow anxious for a more settled life, Rannig might wish to return home, or the Director of the Marridon Academy might finally rot, calling Bartleby back to Marridon for the promotion he so richly deserved. He exhaled, reveling in the pining sigh of impermanence which living in such uncertainty must produce.

This was reflected in a ruminative letter on human nature he sent to his London friend Peter Collinson. “Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of providence,” Franklin wrote, “we had need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than good.” Perhaps even welfare for the poor was an example. He asked whether “the laws peculiar to England which compel the rich to maintain the poor have not given the latter a dependence.” It was “godlike” and laudable, he added, “to relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures,” but might it not in the end “provide encouragements for laziness”? He added a cautionary tale about the New Englanders who decided to get rid of blackbirds that were eating the corn crop. The result was that the worms the blackbirds used to eat proliferated and destroyed the grass and grain crops.

by the end of his indenture, Gideon had gained weight, and had forgotten his outrage at men in power, for he was now a white Georgian with property of his own, instead of a hungry lad gaping at the well-fed rich. And the people—our people—whom the English called Indians were now beneath Gideon. Finally, Gideon Franklin could look down on someone else, instead of being the most despised himself. As a landowner, Gideon was no longer close to power, he possessed it, and even more so when Oglethorpe’s wish of a colony without slavery was violated. And as the years passed, and enslaved Negroes were brought into the colony, though Gideon remained poor, he had pride in his freedom. His optimism grew, as well as his belief that God had blessed him with special grace. And why not? On our land, which the English had stolen from our people, Gideon was a white man. And even the poorest of white men was better than the Indian and the slave.

It also taught him a useful trick for seducing opponents. After one rich and well-bred member spoke against him, Franklin decided to win him over: I did not, however, aim at gaining his favor by paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favor of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I returned it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.

3 He seems to have regarded agriculture as the business most conducive to moral and physical health. He thought "if the leadings of the Spirit were more attended to, more people would be engaged in the sweet employment of husbandry, where labor is agreeable and healthful." He does not condemn the honest acquisition of wealth in other business free from oppression; even "merchandising," he thought, might be carried on innocently and in pure reason. Christ does not forbid the laying up of a needful support for family and friends; the command is, "Lay not up for YOURSELVES treasures on earth." From his little farm on the Rancocas he looked out with a mingled feeling of wonder and sorrow upon the hurry and unrest of the world; and especially was he pained to see luxury and extravagance overgrowing the early plainness and simplicity of his own religious society. He regarded the merely rich man with unfeigned pity. With nothing of his scorn he had all of Thoreau's commiseration, for people who went about bowed down with the weight of broad acres and great houses on their backs.

Gratitude is often considered an element of spirit or purpose. But what are we expected to be grateful for? Innovation calls for financial gains, promotions, and possessions to stoke the fires of gratitude. But kaizen invites us to be grateful for health, for our next breath, for the moments with a friend or colleague. When famous songwriter Warren Zevon was suffering from terminal cancer, David Letterman asked him what wisdom he gleaned from his illness. Zevon’s answer was pure kaizen: “Enjoy every sandwich.” Some quotes on service and gratitude to begin your exploration of kaizen: “I long to accomplish a great and noble task but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” —Helen Keller “We have to learn to live happily in the present moment, to touch the peace and joy that are available now.” —Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Zen master “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” —Albert Einstein “I would rather have it said, ‘He lived usefully’ than ‘He died rich.’ ” —Benjamin Franklin

Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity John Gribbin, Random House (2005) F.F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader Frank Partnoy, Penguin Books (1999) Ice Age John & Mary Gribbin, Barnes & Noble (2002) How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It Arthur Herman, Three Rivers Press (2002) Models of My Life Herbert A. Simon The MIT Press (1996) A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe Gino Segre, Viking Books (2002) Andrew Carnegie Joseph Frazier Wall, Oxford University Press (1970) Guns Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Jared M. Diamond, W. W. Norton & Company The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal Jared Nt[. Diamond, Perennial (1992) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert B. Cialdini, Perennial Currents (1998) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin franklin, Yale Nota Bene (2003) Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos Garrett Hardin, Oxford University Press (1995) The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press (1990) Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. Ron Chernow, Vintage (2004) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor David Sandes, W. W Norton & Company (1998) The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategist Robert G. Hagstrom, Wiley (2000) Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters Matt Ridley, Harper Collins Publishers (2000) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giz.ting In Roger Fisher, William, and Bruce Patton, Penguin Books Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information Robert Wright, Harper Collins Publishers (1989) Only the Paranoid Survive Andy Grove, Currency (1996 And a few from your editor... Les Schwab: Pride in Performance Les Schwab, Pacific Northwest Books (1986) Men and Rubber: The Story of Business Harvey S. Firestone, Kessinger Publishing (2003) Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West, 1840-1900 Irving Stone, Book Sales (2001)

Coca-Cola’s other profitable variation arose serendipitously. For two years, Candler was pestered by an entrepreneur from Chattanooga, Benjamin Franklin Thomas, who wanted to bottle Coca-Cola. In 1889, Candler reluctantly agreed to Thomas’s plan. The bottling of Coke was an instant success, leading to high profits for the company and bottlers. For Coca-Cola, bottlers created a huge new market without any capital need. By 1904 there were more than 120 bottling plants throughout the US. Coca-Cola may be the first example in history of a company concentrating on its ‘core competencies’ (in this case, product formulation, branding and marketing) and outsourcing all capital-intensive functions. As a result, the company grew enormously without having to raise much external capital. And it all happened by chance. When competing colas emerged, Coke was able to command a substantial price premium. To this day, Coca-Cola has remained highly profitable. It currently has an operating margin of 26 per cent, instead of the 5 to 10 per cent typical in the food and beverage industry.

Considering eighteenth-century social mores, Franklin assembled an incredibly divergent mix for the time: rich and poor, young and old, clerk and merchant alike. These were all white men, of course, but for his time, Franklin was breaking down barriers. Every Friday evening, the Junto would congregate to share the essays its members had written on subjects of personal interest. A debate on ethics or natural philosophy, aka scientific inquiry, might follow. To ensure civility, the group levied small fines for direct criticism or personal attacks. Many of these men had no higher education, but they were curious, intellectually intrepid, and, of course, avid readers. Franklin made sure of that in selecting them.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.” In business, nothing is ever too small to notice.

Franklin Roosevelt was pretty good.” “He was already rich. Nobody could touch him.

The miraculously transforming words of John Brown in his Speech to the Court were based on it. “Had I interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been alright. Every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

But on some level writing was a form of witchcraft to Jackson—a way to transform everyday life into something rich and strange, something more than what it appeared to be.

Everyone loves her shit on Atlantic, and no doubt they’re classics, but when I heard her sing ‘Skylark,’ I told Esther Phillips, my running buddy back then, ‘That girl pissed all over that song.’ It came at a time when we were all looking to cross over by singing standards. I had ‘Sunday Kind of Love’ and ‘Trust in Me,’ and Sam Cooke was doing ‘Tennessee Waltz’ and ‘When I Fall in Love’ at the Copa. We were all trying to be so middle class. It was the beginning of the bougie black thing. I truly believe Aretha had a head start on us since she was the daughter of a rich preacher and grew up bougie. But, hell, the reasons don’t matter. She took ‘Skylark’ to a whole ’nother place. When she goes back and sings the chorus the second time and jumps an octave—I mean, she’s screaming—I had to scratch my head and ask myself, How the fuck did that bitch do that? I remember running into Sarah Vaughan, who always intimidated me. Sarah said, ‘Have you heard of this Aretha Franklin girl?’ I said, ‘You heard her do “Skylark,” didn’t you?’ Sarah said, ‘Yes, I did, and I’m never singing that song again.

RICHES WITHOUT WINGS. Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. —Eph. iv. I. Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an uncovetous spirit. —Selden. Less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is to possess it. —Reynolds. Rich, from the very want of wealth, In heaven's best treasures, peace and health. —Gray. Money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. —Franklin. There are treasures laid up in the heart, treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world. —Buddhist Scriptures. "It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better than rubies, and all things that may be desired are not to be compared to it." "Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful, unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless, selfish life.