“When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him.” Instead, he would agree in parts and suggest his differences only indirectly. “For these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me,” he recalled when writing his autobiography. This velvet-tongued and sweetly passive style of circumspect argument would make him seem sage to some, insinuating and manipulative to others, but inflammatory to almost nobody. The method would also become, often with a nod to Franklin, a staple in modern management guides and
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