Benjamin Franklin An American Life

“… he accused Proprietor Thomas Penn of “taking advantage of publich calamity” and trying “to force down their throats laws of imposition abhorrent to common justice and common reason.”
pg. 169

“At first, he was reluctant to guess what practical use might come of balloons, but he was convinced that experimenting with them would someday, as he told Banks, “pave the way to some discoveries in natural philosophy of which at present we have no conception.”
pg. 421