Benjamin Franklin Quotes

There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.

The commerce of the United States is essential, if not to their existence, at least to their comfort, their growth, prosperity, and happiness. The genius, character, and habits of the people are highly commercial. Their cities have been formed and exist upon commerce. Our agriculture, fisheries, arts, and manufactures are connected with and depend upon it. In short, commerce has made this country what it is, and it can not be destroyed or neglected without involving the people in poverty and distress.

The greatness of the British nation is not owing to war and conquests, to enlarging its dominions by the sword, or subjecting the people of other countries to our power; but it is allowing to trade, to the increase of our commerce at home, and the extending it abroad.

Fewness of people, is real poverty; and a Nation wherein are Eight Millions of people, are more than twice as rich as the same scope of Land wherein are but Four

The soil of no country is rich enough to attain a great mass of wealth, merely by the exchange and exportation of its own natural product.

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

A great merchant delivers both joy and profit. Then profit gets reinvested in more joy.

As it is with an individual, so it is with a nation. One must produce to have, or one will become a have-not.

We're going to make America rich again. We're going to make our country great again. And we need the rich in order to make the great.

A country becomes more prosperous in proportion to the rise in the invested capital unit per unit of its population.

We're going to make America wealthy again, because if you don’t do that, it just - it sounds harsh to say, but we have to build up the wealth of our nation.

Americans took a great deal too much credit for creating wealth, when most of the time they had really just been living off natural bounty unprecedented in the history of the world.

I want to bring wealth back to our country so we can afford them.

From the accession of Henry the Seventh to the breaking out of the civil wars, England enjoyed much greater exemption from war, foreign and domestic, than for a long period before, and during the controversy between the houses of York and Lancaster. These years of peace were favorable to commerce and the arts. Commerce and the arts augmented general and individual knowledge; and knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.

We have to realize that this country in its private sector has been fighting the most successful war on poverty the world has seen for the last 200 years.

For the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; and the swords might be turned into ploughshares, the spears into pruning-hooks, and as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more.

In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.

It is Enterprise which build and improves the world's possessions...If Enterprise is afoot, Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, Wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.

America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living - including the inhabitants of the slums.

Manufacturing is the most important...route to prosperity.

I'm not saying "job done" but I am actually pretty confident that Britain can be one of the biggest winners from these big global changes that are taking place and indeed become the richest of the major economies in the world in this coming generation.

Gross National Product is our Holy Grail.

The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.

A nation cannot prosper if its members are not fully aware of the fact that what alone can improve their condition s is more and better production. And this can only be brought about by increased saving and capital accumulation.