Benjamin Franklin, Author at The Imaginative Conservative

About Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.

The Project of Moral Perfection

By Benjamin Franklin|2020-06-11T12:49:40-05:00January 17th, 2016|Categories: Benjamin Franklin, Morality, Virtue|

The American Founders considered the cultivation of virtue essential to the survival of the republic. The following is excerpted from Franklin’s Autobiography, on which he worked between 1771 and 1790, but which was not published in English in its complete form until 1868. Below, we have maintained faithfulness to the original text. It was about [...]

A Better Constitution

By Benjamin Franklin|2023-05-24T23:12:50-05:00September 17th, 2015|Categories: American Founding, Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention|

I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument. Below are Benjamin Franklin’s closing remarks to the Federal Convention [...]