Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

History is a tale, Franklin came to believe, not of immutable forces but of human endeavors.

“He wished to please everybody,” Franklin later said of Keith, “and having little to give, he gave expectations.”

a person who is too fearful will end up performing defensively and thus fail to seize offensive advantages.

Franklin taught his friends to push their ideas through suggestions and questions, and to use (or at least feign) naïve curiosity to avoid contradicting people in a manner that could give offense.

“Would you win the hearts of others, you must not seem to vie with them, but to admire them. Give them every opportunity of displaying their own qualifications, and when you have indulged their vanity, they will praise you in turn and prefer you above others . . . Such is the vanity of mankind that minding what others say is a much surer way of pleasing them than talking well ourselves.”6

“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”14

“He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants.”