The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Points clés

• Apprenez tout en imitant les meilleurs, en réécrivant de mémoire et en comparant
• Suivez vos vertus sur une grille simple, une par une
• La réputation se bâtit sur ce que l'on vous voit faire chaque jour
• Parlez avec modestie et vos idées ne feront plus face au refus
• Partagez le mérite et vos projets iront plus loin

À l'intérieur de ce bit

1. Un parcours autodidacte raconté simplement

   A teenage runaway walks into Philadelphia with a few coins, buys three bread rolls and wanders the streets eating one with the others under his arms. The girl watching him laugh will later become his wife.

2. Apprendre par imitation

   Franklin left school at 10 and learned to write by copying the best. He took essays from an English magazine he admired, made short notes on each, put them away for days, then tried to rebuild the essays from the notes in his own words.

3. Treize vertus dans un carnet

   Franklin wanted to be morally perfect and, being practical, he built a system. He listed 13 virtues, among them temperance, silence, order, frugality, industry, sincerity and humility, and gave each a short rule.

4. Travail, frugalité et réputation

   Franklin built his printing business on two virtues and one insight. The virtues were industry and frugality: work long hours, avoid debt, spend little.

5. Convaincre en douceur, bâtir ensemble

   Young Franklin loved to win arguments and noticed it made him enemies. So he changed his speech, dropping words like certainly and undoubtedly, and saying instead that he imagined a thing to be so, or that it seemed to him.

6. Passez à l'action

   Pick one piece of writing you admire, make notes on it, wait 3 days and rewrite it from the notes, then compare. Draw a grid of 5 habits you want against the days of this week and mark each lapse with a dot; tackle only one habit at a time.