Benjamin Franklin — "If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself."
If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.
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More from Benjamin Franklin
"An old young man will be a young old man."
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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
The most reliable person to serve your interests is yourself. Relying on others — servants, employees, or intermediaries — introduces misalignment: they won't care as deeply, work as diligently, or understand your standards the way you do. If you want something done faithfully and to your satisfaction, the surest path is handling it personally. Self-reliance beats delegation when quality and trustworthiness matter most.
Relevance to Benjamin Franklin
Franklin embodied radical self-reliance — a printer's apprentice who built himself into America's foremost polymath. He ran his own press, conducted his own experiments, and negotiated treaties himself. His Poor Richard's Almanack repeatedly championed industry and personal responsibility. Having risen from obscurity through self-discipline, Franklin distrusted dependence on others. This maxim reflects his lived conviction that personal effort beats hired help for anything that truly matters.
The era
In 18th-century colonial America, household servants were common but notoriously unreliable — pilfering, shirking, or misunderstanding instructions. Indentured servitude and hired labor existed alongside deep class distrust. The Enlightenment simultaneously promoted individual reason and self-sufficiency as virtues. Franklin's era was also the dawn of the American self-made ideal, a society promising upward mobility through personal industry, where depending on servants was both a luxury and a liability.
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