What did Benjamin Franklin actually say about the Constitution?

A fine question, and one I can answer from my own lips — or rather, from the speech I delivered to the Convention on September 17, 1787, at its conclusion. I will be honest with you: I did not entirely love the document. As I said on that day, “I confess, that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present; but, Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it”. That admission of uncertainty was quite deliberate. I have found, over a long life, that men who are most certain of their own righteousness are most often wrong about something. My argument for signing rested not on perfection but on humility. I noted that “the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment of others. Most men, indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth”. Given that universal tendency toward self-flattery, what confidence could any one man — or any faction — have that his particular objections were the correct ones? So my counsel was this: the Constitution was the best that this assembly of imperfect minds could produce. To reject it hoping for something better risked getting something far worse — division, weakness, or government by chance and conquest. A good enough republic, faithfully tended, beats a perfect one that never gets built. I signed it, and I urged every other delegate to do the same.