Benjamin Franklin — "I shall rise to apologize for not getting up."
I shall rise to apologize for not getting up.
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More from Benjamin Franklin
"What is wit, or wealth, or form, or learning, when compared with virtue?"
"Vessels large may venture more, but little boats should keep near shore."
"I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first."
"He that is used to go to bed hungry, and rise early, may be a good workman, but he is a bad master."
"He that has a wife and children, has given hostages to fortune."
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.
Details
Mocking rules of social etiquette due to gout and age
Date: Unknown, likely late in life
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Understanding this quote
What it means
This quote captures a self-defeating paradox delivered as deadpan wit. The speaker acknowledges he should stand but cannot — yet the very act of rising to offer that apology defeats its own purpose. It is a wry admission of limitation wrapped in verbal irony: the remedy and the problem are the same action, leaving the apology suspended in comic contradiction that makes the listener laugh rather than take offense.
Relevance to Benjamin Franklin
Franklin was celebrated as much for razor-sharp wit as for science and statecraft. His Poor Richard's Almanack overflows with paradoxes and self-deprecating observations. In his later years, plagued by gout at diplomatic gatherings in Paris, he had real cause to remain seated. This verbal sleight of hand — turning a social apology into a logical puzzle — is pure Franklin: charming, self-aware, and disarming all at once.
The era
In 18th-century polite society, rising to greet someone was a fundamental gesture of respect — failing to stand was a genuine social slight requiring acknowledgment. Franklin's era prized wit above almost all conversational virtues; salons in Philadelphia and Paris rewarded the cleverest turn of phrase. A quip that exposed the absurdity of formal etiquette while simultaneously performing it was considered the height of cultivated, gentlemanly humor.
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