Discussions were to be conducted "without fondness for dispute or desire of victory." Franklin taught his friends to push their ideas through suggestions and questions, and to use {or at least feign} naïve curiosity to avoid contradicting people in a manner that could give offense. "All expressions of positiveness in opinion or of direct contradiction," he recalled, "were prohibited under small pecuniary penalties." It was a style he would urge on the Constitutional Convention sixty years later. In
( Walter Isaacson )
[ Benjamin Franklin: An American ]
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