Benjamin Franklin — "There are in life real evils enough, and it is folly to afflict ourselves with i…"
There are in life real evils enough, and it is folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones; it is time enough when the real ones arrive.
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More from Benjamin Franklin
"The most important of all business is to be busy."
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
"The industrious man needs no food, for there shall be nourishment enough in the grave."
"He who endeavors to drink salt needs fear no thirst."
"Without vanity, without an ostentatious display of learning, and without any other object than the good of the public, he is always ready to communicate his knowledge to others."
About Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Polymath Founding Father, diplomat, and Poor Richard's Almanack author who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Closely associated with John Adams (fellow Founder, Massachusetts statesman) and Thomas Jefferson (fellow Declaration drafter). For an intellectual contrast, see Thomas Hutchinson, last royal governor of colonial Massachusetts — Franklin leaked Hutchinson's loyalist correspondence to Boston in 1772 to inflame revolutionary sentiment — Hutchinson represented the colonial-aristocrat crown-loyalty that Franklin's revolution was organized to dismantle.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Stop torturing yourself over problems that haven't happened yet and may never happen. Worry is wasted energy until trouble actually shows up. Save your mental strength for genuine difficulties when they arrive, because life already hands you enough real hardship without you manufacturing additional suffering through anxious speculation about futures that exist only in your imagination.
Relevance to Benjamin Franklin
Franklin embodied practical stoicism throughout his life. He survived smallpox, built businesses from poverty, navigated Revolutionary War diplomacy in a hostile Paris, and outlived multiple children. His Poor Richard's Almanack repeatedly preached against unproductive thought. A man who spent decades solving tangible problems—electricity, stoves, bifocals, colonial governance—had little patience for invented anxieties.
The era
Colonial Americans faced genuinely brutal realities: disease epidemics, harsh winters, crop failures, frontier violence, and political instability under British rule. Life expectancy was short, infant mortality staggering. In this context, frivolous worry about hypothetical problems was a genuine luxury no one could afford. Resilience and forward-focused pragmatism were survival traits, not mere philosophy.
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