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The Wisdom of Benjamin Franklin

Patriot, inventor, statesman, orator, sage, scientist, printer, philosopher, musician, economist, Benjamin Franklin was truly a renaissance man.

"If you would not be forgotten,
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
Or do things worth the writing."

--Benjamin Franklin

Franklin certainly did both, and his words and those of others about him, live on to this day. Among those that are particularly pertinent today are these famous words:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. "

--Benjamin Franklin in the Historical Review of Pennsylvania

Franklin used his wit with equal dexterity:

"We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

--Franklin's response to a John Hancock remark that the revolutionaries should be unanimous in their action; made at the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776