Francis Bacon Quotes

563 Sourced Quotes

We can command nature only by obeying her...

Francis Bacon
There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.

Francis Bacon
A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.

Francis Bacon
If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know, you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not.

Francis Bacon
Such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener.

Francis Bacon
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.

Francis Bacon
Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

Francis Bacon
There is nothing more certain in nature than that it is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated.

Francis Bacon
There was a young man in Rome that was very like Augustus Caesar; Augustus took knowledge of it and sent for the man, and asked him "Was your mother never at Rome?" He answered "No Sir; but my father was."

Francis Bacon
Upon a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures is the work and aim of human power. To discover the Form of a given nature, or its true difference, or its causal nature, or fount of its emanation... this is the work and aim of human knowledge.

Francis Bacon
Judges ought above all to remember the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables :The supreme law of all is the weal [weatlh/ well-being] of the people.

Francis Bacon
Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Francis Bacon
Those who become practically versed in nature are, the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician, but all (as matters now stand) with faint efforts and meager success.

Francis Bacon
It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.

Francis Bacon
Physique is situate in a middle term or distance between natural history and metaphysic. For natural history describeth the variety of things; physic the causes, but variable or respective causes; and metaphysic the fixed and constant causes.

Francis Bacon
First therefore let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes and acts of God, as far as they are revealed to man and may be observed with sobriety; wherein we may not seek it by the name of Learning; for all Learning is Knowledge acquired, and all Knowledge in God is original: and therefore we must look for it by another name, that of Wisdom or Sapience, as the Scriptures call it.

Francis Bacon
Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings.

Francis Bacon
When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.

Francis Bacon
The errors of young men are the ruin of business, but the errors of aged men amount to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.

Francis Bacon
Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs: for occasions have their revolutions, and what has once been advantageously used may be so again, either as an old thing or a new one.

Francis Bacon
Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

Francis Bacon
Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware, that they carry their anger rather with scorn, than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury, than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it.

Francis Bacon
He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat, committeth himself to prison.

Francis Bacon
Those experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give more light to the invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner's needle, which giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails, which give the motion.

Francis Bacon
Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.

Francis Bacon
Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.

Francis Bacon
Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.

Francis Bacon
I work for posterity, these things requiring ages for their accomplishment.

Francis Bacon
The real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches.

Francis Bacon
When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.

Francis Bacon