For life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effects of prudence or the want of it.
He draws an analogy between life and chess, emphasizing strategy and foresight in both.
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More from Benjamin Franklin
Our legal method of compulsion is by imprisonment: the Indians cannot and will not imprison one another; and if we attempt to imprison them, I apprehend it would be generally disliked by the nations, and occasion breaches.
Many quarrels and wars have arisen between the colonies and Indian nations, through the bad conduct of traders, who cheat the Indians after making them drunk, &c. to the great expence of the colonies both in blood and treasure.
An ancient sage valued himself upon this, that though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little one.
I apprehend, that excluding the people of the colonies from all share in the choice of the grand council will give extreme dissatisfaction; as well as the taxing them by act of parliament, where they have no representation.
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