Benjamin Franklin Quotes

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

Ours is the only government under heaven where liberty can, in truth, be said to dwell; and the numberless advantages of such a government, for moral, religious, and intellectual improvement, may be learnt from the prosperous state of our country since the time she assumed her just and proper station among the nations of the earth.

The newspaper is in all its literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct

I rejoice in having so favorable an opportunity of felicitating the State of Rhode Island on the co-operation I am sure to find in the measures adopted by the guardians of literature in this place, for improving the morals of the rising generation, and inculcating upon their minds principles peculiarly calculated for the preservation of our rights and liberties. You may rely on whatever protection I may be able to afford in so important an object as the education of our youth.

… schools of liberty …. warehouses of disinterested patriotism

From you we have learned what we, at least, value, to separate Church and State; and from you we gather inspiration at all times in our devotion to learning, to religious liberty, and to individual and National freedom.

We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.

You don't need a city charter to know that education is the foundation of any community.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy!

Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted.

Civic education and civic responsibility should be taught in elementary school.

Being a reporter is at the very core of a democracy, being a free person in a free society.

Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.

The main hope of a state lies in the proper education of its youth.

No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect upwards, supporting free and good government.

Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of Democracy, and while guided and controlled by virtue, the noblest attribute of man. It is the only dictator that freemen acknowledge, and the only security which freemen desire.

What is the soul, the informing spirit of our institutions, of our entire system of government but public opinion. Let us direct the force, the vast moral force of this engine, to the aid of others.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

We cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government, for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.

Our forefathers realized the importance of education to a nation, and particularly the importance of an educated people in a democracy, but we seem to have forgotten what sacrifices they made to start a public school system in this country.

Give civil and religious liberty, you give everything—knowledge and science, heroism and honor, virtue and power ; deny them, and you deny everything