Political Quotes

Benjamin Franklin: “I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire.”

Editor's note · Context

Franklin poignantly notes the cycle of life, having witnessed many generations come and go.

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If the treaty cannot be made as much to your advantage as to ours, don't make it.

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They have no profitable appointments, but a mere payment of daily wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their expences, so that having no chance for great places and enormous salaries or pensions, as in some countries, there is no…

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Few of their Children in the Country learn English . . . The Signs in our Streets have Inscriptions in both Languages, and in some places only [their language] . . . In short, unless the Stream of their Importation could be turned…

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Yet had I gone at 70, it would have cut off 12 of the most active years of my life, employed too in matters of the greatest importance; but whether I have been doing good or mischief, is for time to discover.

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