Thirteen Virtues

Benjamin Franklin’s personal scheme for “moral perfection” — a list of thirteen virtues, each with a one-line precept, that he tracked against himself one at a time. It is essentially a habit-tracking system three centuries early: pick a behavior, define it precisely, measure your relapses, iterate. The direct conceptual ancestor of Atomic Habits.

The list

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. Tranquility: Be not disturbed by trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Notes

• Franklin’s candor about failing at this project — see The Speckled Ax — is as important as the list itself.

Related concepts

• Benjamin Franklin — devised the scheme for “moral perfection” and tracked himself against it one virtue at a time.
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — the source where Franklin lays out the list and his self-examination method.
• Atomic Habits — the modern descendant of Franklin’s measure-and-iterate approach to behavior change.
• The Speckled Ax — Franklin’s parable of giving up on perfection, the candid counterpoint to the virtue list.
• Jesus — named by Franklin as a model for the thirteenth virtue, Humility.
• Socrates — paired with Jesus as the exemplar Franklin invokes for Humility.

Where this appears

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin