“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him,” said Franklin. “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
Despite having no formal education, Franklin understood the importance and set out to satisfy his insatiable appetite for knowledge on his own. While his father couldn’t afford to send him to school, he nonetheless took the young Franklin on walks to various tradesmen, teaching him about their tools and techniques. “It has been useful to me, having learnt so much by it as to be able to do little jobs myself,” recalled Franklin. His father also exposed him to politics and current affairs, having himself been an active member of his community.
By the age of 11, Franklin had taught himself English, French, and Italian and doggedly chased down any literature he could. “From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books,” he said. He had only been in grammar school for two years, but was reading the likes of Socrates before he should have even been in junior high school.
His quest to educate himself continued while working as an apprentice at his brother’s printing house. Franklin set out to improve his writing skills by studying the works of other authors, trying to emulate them and rewriting them in an attempt to improve them. He also used this time to read as much as he could and even became a vegetarian in order to avoid paying the high cost of meat and save more money for books.
“Genius without education is like silver in the mine,” said Franklin. Without the proper training, an individual’s talent would, accordingly, never be realized to its fullest potential. This is why throughout his entire life Franklin dedicated himself to self-improvement. He knew that there would never be a time when he would stop learning because there would always be something to learn. “The doors to wisdom are never shut,” he said. “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
Books were not the only source of knowledge for Franklin. It was his desire to continually be learning new things that led to his founding of the Junto in 1727. A forum for intellectuals to discuss and explore their ideas, Junto members were committed to improving their minds, and to a larger degree, the world. He also used his newspapers to stimulate open debate and encourage discussions on the current issues of the time.
Franklin’s endless curiosity helped fuel his business pursuits and his scientific inquiries and propelled him to the forefront of America’s intellectual community. “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning,” said Franklin, believing that he who was wise was the man who learned from every one and every opportunity he could. “Not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own.”
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