A Quote by Isidor Isaac Rabi

My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin-the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man. ... Where are the life-size-or even pint-size-Benjamin Franklins of today?

Isidor Isaac Rabi

Quote Topics

American American History Emulation Even Figure Franklin History Ideal Ideal Man Life Man Most Pint Size Today Whole Worthy

Quote Author

Isidor Isaac Rabi
American - Physicist
July 29, 1898 - January 11, 1988

I'm so proud of myself. I thought, 'I've got to learn about American history.' I literally took two months off and watched every documentary known to man. I really didn't know Benjamin Franklin was so cool.

Rene Russo

Benjamin Franklin may have discovered electricity, but it was the man who invented the meter who made the money.

Earl Wilson

For years, I've had a hankering for the portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis. Franklin is credited with so many inventions: the postal system, lightning rods, the constitution. He was a rock star before there was such a thing.

Jon Bon Jovi

After the signing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, "What have you given us, sir?" Franklin Responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it." A critical moment in history has come; our Republic is in jeopardy. Can we keep it? If the answer to that question, as I fear, is "no," then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Glenn Beck

Benjamin Franklin refused to have one of his children vaccinated against smallpox. The four-year-old boy died, and Franklin wrote later of how mistaken he was to expose him to the needless risk.

Michael Specter

Some of the most productive people in history have been self-confessed 'muck-middens,' as my husband would say: Agatha Christie, Benjamin Franklin and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few.

Kate Garraway

[John's Adams] description of [Benjamin] Franklin in a letter to [his wife] Abigail in 1775 is laudatory. Only when he experiences all the adulation paid to Franklin in Paris does he begin to change his tune.

Gordon S. Wood

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Benjamin Franklin

An old American patriot described today’s situation very well. As America fought for its independence, Benjamin Franklin said, “we must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

John F. Kerry

No man is truly free who is in financial bondage. 'Think what you do when you run in debt', said Benjamin Franklin, 'you give another power over your liberty.'

Ezra Taft Benson

Elevated levels of confidence are omnipresent among history's greatest overachievers. Benjamin Franklin, one of the most famous men in the world even before he signed the Declaration of Independence once lamented about humility, "I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue."

John Eliot

Benjamin Franklin went through life an altered man because he once paid too dearly for a penny whistle. My concern springs usually from a deeper source, to wit, from having bought a whistle when I did not want one.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The myth that young people should leave the nest at 18, never to return, started with iconic American Benjamin Franklin.

Annalee Newitz

Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion. --Benjamin Franklin