Bonus:
Double Classics! (Hasty Pudding)
Commentary: This, of course, is why Ben Franklin is the best founding father. You read about him and go, "yeah, I'd hang out with him in high school." I think a modern Ben Franklin would dabble in video games and stuff, but still mostly stick to the classics. I bet he'd be big on Lord of the Rings. Probably Star Trek.
I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words “certainly,” “undoubtedly,” or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so-and-so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.
This is true, but I think there's an important distinction here that people sometimes take this too far and start arguing against themselves. I think part of what makes Franklin's way work is putting the uncertainty first. "If I understand correctly, X," is more confident than, "X, if I understand correctly." You're not ending on the uncertainty.
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