“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
— Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack made quite the splash when it was published in 1738. Its full title, Poor Richard, An Almanack For the Year of Christ 1738, Being the Second after LEAP YEAR, was a bit of a mouthful, but if you could get past that, you were in for a real treat.
The almanac was a treasure trove of wisdom, peppered with Franklin’s clever observations and advice. Many phrases we still attribute to him today first saw the light of day in these very pages. One particular gem from the 1738 edition goes like this:
“If you wou’d not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
or do things worth the writing.”
Like many of the sayings that we attribute to Franklin, this one didn’t fully originate with him. He was an avid reader and had a talent for curating, rewriting, and combining existing adages to craft the perfect nuggets of wisdom. The core of the famous adage in question appeared earlier in Thomas Fuller’s 1727 collection titled Introductio ad Prudentiam: Or, Directions, Counsels, and Cautions, Tending to Prudent Management of Affairs in Common Life. Fuller’s version went like this:
“If thou wouldest win Immortality of Name, either do things worth the writing, or write things worth the reading.”
Franklin, being the wordsmith he was, modified and polished it into the more memorable version we know today. His genius lay in making these borrowed words resonate with everyday folks. Franklin’s talent for mixing scholarly sayings with folk wisdom is just one of the many reasons he is revered to this day.
Franklin probably did the best job of anyone in following his own counsel. In his lifetime, he wrote so many memorable things, and he did so much that 234 years after his death, writers are still coming up with the words to record everything he accomplished.
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