Thomas Brooks

“The most dangerous hypocrite in a Commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.”40”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“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”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“The other sins on his list were, in order: seeming uninterested, speaking too much about your own life, prying for personal secrets (“an unpardonable rudeness”), telling long and pointless stories (“old folks are most subject to this error, which is one chief reason their company is so often shunned”), contradicting or disputing someone directly, ridiculing or railing against things except in small witty doses (“it’s like salt, a little of which in some cases gives relish, but if thrown on by handfuls spoils all”), and spreading scandal (though he would later write lighthearted defenses of gossip).”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“Knowledge, he realized, “was obtained rather by the use of the ear than of the tongue.”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life