Benjamin Franklin — "Remember that time is money."
Remember that time is money.
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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
Your time has real economic value — every hour spent idle is income you didn't earn. Wasting time is no different from throwing money away. If you could be working but aren't, the lost wages are a genuine cost. The phrase captures the core idea of opportunity cost: choosing leisure over labor means forfeiting what that labor would have produced or earned.
Relevance to Benjamin Franklin
Franklin wrote this in his 1748 essay 'Advice to a Young Tradesman.' A self-made man — apprentice printer turned wealthy publisher and statesman — he retired from active business at 42 on accumulated earnings. His almanac Poor Richard's preached industry and frugality for 25 years. The Protestant work ethic shaped his worldview: idleness was moral failure, and productivity was both economic wisdom and personal virtue.
The era
Franklin wrote this in 1748, when colonial America was transitioning from agrarian subsistence to commercial trade. Labor was scarce and expensive; time genuinely equated to wages. The Protestant work ethic, dominant across New England and mid-Atlantic colonies, framed idleness as sin. With mercantile capitalism expanding and artisan trades growing, productivity was increasingly quantifiable in money, making Franklin's equation between time and earnings both culturally resonant and practically urgent.
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