“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. -Benjamin Franklin” (yourworldwithin.com). Benjamin Franklin was not only one of the founding fathers but he also achieved great achievement as an author, politician, scientist, and mathematician. Although Franklin was born into a poor family, that did not stop him from getting to where he is today. Even though Benjamin Franklin had a job and little time to learn, he was able to understand Newton's theories of physics as a teenager; his showcased his brightness and natural intelligence.
I want to explore and talk about their lives, and how their experiences based on their paths, gender, and even religion educated them and made them the influential people they are considered today. Franklin was born into a not so wealthy family. However, he was still educated, and his father wanted him to become a priest. Franklin didn’t want that and eventually his father realized this. Franklin eventually went to a printing press and wrote.
He then worked for his father creating candles but firmly disliked it and craved for more of his life. Franklin’s love for writing grew and desired to join a printing company and soon left for London to follow his dream. There, he worked harder than anyone else, “They wondered to see, from this and several instances, that the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer” (Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 34)! When he returns to Philadelphia, he is met by a friend Meredith when they decide to manage Keimer’s press printing company. Franklin succeeds in the business and makes great money and soon is the official printer for the Pennsylvania Assembly.
The book itself outlines all the ways in which Franklin rises up to become better than the people who were superior to him earlier on in his life. Franklin’s brother thought that he was superior to Franklin, so in order to enact revenge Franklin moves to Philadelphia and becomes success in the printing business in the new world. This is what spurs his desire for self betterment
He originally wanted to become perfect, but he was never able to achieve this goal. Franklin was trying to reach perfection, and this excerpt documents that struggle. Many people try to reach a higher level of humanity, but none are able to achieve it. People will alway be flawed, no matter how they may wish this was not the case. “...I believe this [is] the case of many, who, having, for want of some
Enlightenment philosophical concepts were mostly centered on moving away from absolute monarchies, were they held all the power but to a democracy where people were able to corporate their ideas in government and make decisions. From these teachings and new intellectual discoveries, The Enlightenment influenced the American and French revolution as well as the Latin Wars. John Locke 's Ideas were heavily utilized in both the American and French revolutions. In the American Revolution, his three rights for all were incorporated in their Declaration of Independence from the British monarchy. Similar clashes between the government and the governed occurred in Haiti.
Succinctly, Franklin believed in the existence of a divine power, but also believed that this power did not intervene into the daily lives of people. Franklin was quite open with his religion, meaning that he did not discriminate against other religions and is once found in a Quaker meeting (pg. 6 of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1791). Much like today’s American fundamentals, Franklin believed in allowing people to worship freely, without discernment or prejudice toward other
The Enlightenment sparked and altered many future events because of its significant ideas. The main ideas of the Enlightenment were reason, individualism, Fraternity, and skepticism. The Enlightenment was a time for people to use reason and represent individualism because people were skeptical of old beliefs, and therefore they
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau was another philosophe and he believed that human beings were born good but were spoiled by society • Society set people against each other and made them unequal and unhappy • The philosophe Denis Diderot did a lot to spread the ideas of the Enlightenment • He created the Encyclopedie which filled 35 volumes • Its articles encouraged freedom of expression, urged education for all, and criticized slavery and religion. • This was one of the greatest accomplishments of the Enlightenment C. The Enlightenment and Society • Enlightenment ideas spread quickly • Many of the philosophes knew each other personally and gathered in homes of the rich who supported the philosophers • They believed in freedom and equality, even for women, but not equal to men • Mary Wollstonecraft of Great Britain protested for equal rights to women • She believed that women could become equal to men through education • Governments and the Roman Catholic Church considered the new ideas a threat • They practiced
America contains many authors who have tried to help society live better lives, ones of felicity as Benjamin Franklin so aptly referred to. Authors, such as Franklin, taught his reader, through his biography that the best way to achieve happiness was to better oneself, through at least having the appearance of virtue. F. Scott Fitzgerald taught people that living life with honesty and not facades were the best ways to live life. Fitzgerald is responding through Gatsby to Franklin in what he has to say about how to achieve happiness. Fitzgerald does not necessarily agree with what Franklin says in the sense that just having the appearance of virtue is enough to achieve a happy life.