Francis Bacon Quotes
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Let no one think or maintain that a person can search too far or be too well studied in either the book of God's word or the book of God's works.
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Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life.
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First the amendment of their own minds. For the removal of the impediments of the mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune than the obtaining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind.
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It is a great happiness when men's professions and their inclinations accord.
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Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret.
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Disciples do owe their masters only a temporary belief, and a suspension of their own judgment till they be fully instructed.
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My praise shall be dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The mind is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is the double of that which is.
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Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.
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In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts.
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There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
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We must see whether the same clock with weights will go faster at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; it is probable, if the pull of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine, that the earth has real attraction.
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But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.
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Children sweeten labours. But they make misfortune more bitter. They increase the care of life. But they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts. But memory, merit and noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men which have sought to express the images of their minds where those of their bodies have failed.
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The only hope [of science] ... is in genuine induction.
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Of all the things in nature, the formation and endowment of man was singled out by the ancients.
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Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man's self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.
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When a bee stings, she dies. She cannot sting and live. When men sting, their better selves die. Every sting kills a better instinct. Men must not turn bees and kill themselves in stinging others.
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Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are are only good intellectual tools.
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Come home to men's business and bosoms.
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A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
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Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.
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Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve it.
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Why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me?
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Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.