"To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions"
About this Quote
Franklin’s line lands like a tidy slap at two American habits: our appetite for certainty and our talent for missing the moment while we argue about it. “Jump” is the operative verb. It’s physical, almost reckless, and it drags “success” out of the realm of abstract virtue and into bodily timing. You can’t jump slowly. You either take the opening or you don’t.
The sting is in the comparison. Franklin assumes we’re already quick at “conclusions” - snap judgments, premature certainty, the cheap closure of thinking you’ve solved the puzzle. The quote flatters and scolds at once: you’re decisive, sure; you’re also lazy in where you spend that decisiveness. He’s not warning against conclusions outright, he’s exposing how often our speed is misallocated. We leap mentally because it’s low-cost; we hesitate behaviorally because action is expensive, reputationally risky, and harder to reverse.
As a politician and civic architect in a young, opportunity-soaked America, Franklin is speaking from a culture where mobility (economic, social, geographic) was becoming ideology. The advice reads like an early manual for the self-made myth, but with a shrewd moral: decisiveness should be disciplined, not performative. It’s also Franklin the satirical moralist: the joke is that we pride ourselves on being “rational” while our fastest moves are often the least examined.
In modern terms, it’s an indictment of hot takes. If you’re going to be impulsive, be impulsive about building, not about declaring you understand.
The sting is in the comparison. Franklin assumes we’re already quick at “conclusions” - snap judgments, premature certainty, the cheap closure of thinking you’ve solved the puzzle. The quote flatters and scolds at once: you’re decisive, sure; you’re also lazy in where you spend that decisiveness. He’s not warning against conclusions outright, he’s exposing how often our speed is misallocated. We leap mentally because it’s low-cost; we hesitate behaviorally because action is expensive, reputationally risky, and harder to reverse.
As a politician and civic architect in a young, opportunity-soaked America, Franklin is speaking from a culture where mobility (economic, social, geographic) was becoming ideology. The advice reads like an early manual for the self-made myth, but with a shrewd moral: decisiveness should be disciplined, not performative. It’s also Franklin the satirical moralist: the joke is that we pride ourselves on being “rational” while our fastest moves are often the least examined.
In modern terms, it’s an indictment of hot takes. If you’re going to be impulsive, be impulsive about building, not about declaring you understand.
Quote Details
| Topic | Success |
|---|---|
| Source | Benjamin Franklin — aphorism commonly attributed to him; see Wikiquote entry for Benjamin Franklin (quotation collections cite it; original primary-source reference unclear). |
More Quotes by Benjamin
Add to List
