Remember that time is money.

The sentence opens Advice to a Young Tradesman, and Franklin explains it with sums. A man who can earn ten shillings a day and sits idle half of it, though he spends only sixpence, has thrown away five shillings besides. The next paragraph begins in the same way, “Remember that credit is money”, and a later one reminds the reader that money “can beget money”. The piece concludes that the way to wealth depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality.

Franklin printed it in Philadelphia in 1748, as the advice of an old tradesman to a young one. He was forty-two and had just retired from his printing business, rich enough to give the rest of his life to science and public affairs.

The idea was not new, but Franklin’s blunt formula is the one that stuck. Max Weber opened his study of the spirit of capitalism with this text, as its purest expression, and the phrase has served since as a motto of business and as a target for those who think life is not for sale.

Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One, opening lines, 1748

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