Francis Bacon Quotes
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They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
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Innovations, which are the births of time.
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There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.
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The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.
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Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.
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Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.
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Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
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A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made.
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The essential form of knowledge... is nothing but a representation of truth: for the truth of being and the truth of knowing are one, differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected.
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Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
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Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.
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Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.
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Riches are for spending.
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It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
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Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
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I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.
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Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
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Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.
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Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.
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Virtue is like precious odours,-most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
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It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.
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The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
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If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted.
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States as great engines move slowly.