Famous quotes containing the words benjamin franklin, benjamin, franklin and/or class:
“I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, make the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
“Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph.... Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“A benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
“There is ... a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language.... Now, so entire is my faith in the power of words, that at times, I have believed it possible to embody even the evanescence of fancies such as I have attempted to describe.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)