If you enjoyed the Franklin quote in this article, check out his autobiography. It is a gold mine of "life hacks", demonstrated via accounts of Franklin's remarkable life. It seems to be one of the original American self-help books :)
"I grew convinc'd that Truth, Sincerity and Integrity in Dealings between Man and Man, were of the utmost Importance to the Felicity of Life." I live my life according this. I've regretted many mistakes along the way. I have never regretted telling the truth. I might withhold the truth. I might knowingly let people assume things, but that is their own fault. I will not lie. The problem after reading this in high school is that I became a lover of truth which I later learned is a philosopher.
Technically I believe a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, rather than just truth. But I guess you could rightly argue that truth is a subset of wisdom... :)
That looks nice, but I wish there was an option to view it as simply formatted HTML too. There's something nice about just being able to click the link and have it there.
He just had a very Feynman-like way (or Feynman had a Franklin-like way) of seeing the world. He sees confirmation bias, the dangers of saying yes, the power of positive thinking, failure as a teaching tool, the power of a nebulous "them", habit chaining ...
But my favorite quote/section is on his 13th virtue, humility. Frankling was told by a friend to stop being so proud, and so he introduced a habit of always being extra modest when espousing his opinions, adding "I imagine" and "perhaps" instead of "undoubtedly" and "certainly." Anyway, he goes on to say while it wasn't a total success, he felt he'd been pretty successful in habituating that modesty for 50 years, but pride is a hard thing to subdue, "for even if I had completely overcome it, I would probably be proud of my humility." !!
He ruled up a book with virtues—the ones he wanted to improve in—down the side of the page, the days along the top, and drew black dots at the end of each day next to each virtue he'd lapsed in. And tried to have less black dots with every day.
That was the most valuable thing I got from that book. I tried it once, decades ago.
He also wrote this epitaph for himself in his 20s:
The Body of
B. Franklin, Printer;
Like the Cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be wholly lost:
For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more,
In a new & more perfect Edition,
Corrected and amended
By the Author.
And also essays on farting and choosing a mistress.
That's actually super smart. I usually try to log my habits/daily things to do (write in journal, exercise, spend at least an hour reading a book etc.) but doing it for virtues sounds like a good idea. What did you get from doing it? Why'd you stop?
