Benjamin Franklin — "Search others for their virtues, thy self for thy vices."
Search others for their virtues, thy self for thy vices.
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More from Benjamin Franklin
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."
"To cross the sea takes naught but a pair of legs and the will to swim."
"Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal."
"The greatest invention of the 19th century was the discovery of the 18th century."
"He that has a calling, has an office of profit and honor."
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
When looking outward at others, focus on their strengths — qualities worth learning from and imitating. When looking inward at yourself, focus on your weaknesses — flaws worth correcting. It's a deliberate reversal of human instinct: people naturally notice others' faults and overlook their own. The quote demands intellectual humility and generous perception simultaneously: be a student of others' good qualities, and your own harshest critic.
Relevance to Benjamin Franklin
Franklin famously tracked his own moral failures in a daily ledger, cycling through 13 self-defined virtues and marking each lapse with a black dot. Yet he learned eagerly from anyone — printers, scientists, diplomats, French nobles alike. His Autobiography explicitly credits others' examples as his greatest teachers. This quote encapsulates his twin disciplines: relentless self-inventory and generous, curious observation of the people around him.
The era
Colonial America blended Puritan moral culture — which demanded constant confession of personal sin — with Enlightenment ideals of reason and civic virtue. Public shaming of moral deviants was common; people routinely judged neighbors harshly while excusing themselves. Franklin, a deist and Enlightenment thinker active in the 1700s, pushed against this hypocrisy. Reversing the gaze — admiring others, scrutinizing oneself — was a quietly radical humanist stance in an age of religious moralizing.
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