Francis Bacon Quotes

563 Sourced Quotes

Facts, however, will ultimately prevail; we must therefore take care that they be not against us.

Francis Bacon
I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.

Francis Bacon
In the inquiry which is made by anatomy, I find much deficiency: for they inquire of the parts, and their substances, figures, and collocations; but they inquire not of the diversities of the parts, the secrecies of the passages, and the seats or nestling of the humors, nor much of footsteps and impressions of diseases.

Francis Bacon
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.

Francis Bacon
Discourse ought to be as a field, without coming home to any man.

Francis Bacon
Men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss.

Francis Bacon
That conceit which is elegantly expressed by the emperor Charles the fifth in his instructions to the King, his son, "that fortune hath somewhat the nature of a woman, that if she be too much wooed she is the farther off."

Francis Bacon
Physics inquires into the efficient and the matter, and metaphysics into the form and the end. Physics, therefore, is vague and unstable as to causes, and treats movable bodies as its subjects, without discovering a constancy of causes in different subjects.

Francis Bacon
If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.

Francis Bacon
A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.

Francis Bacon
To conclude therefore, let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's words, or in the book of God's work, divinity, or philosophy; but rather let men endeavor an endless progress or proficiency in both.

Francis Bacon
He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.

Francis Bacon
All sciences are connected, and support each other with mutual aid, as parts of the same whole, of which each performs its work, not for itself alone, but for the others as well : as the eye directs the whole body, and the foot supports the whole; so that any part of knowledge taken from the rest is like an eye torn out or a foot cut off.

Francis Bacon
The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.

Francis Bacon
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men-the master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order.

Francis Bacon
There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man's own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.

Francis Bacon
Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

Francis Bacon
A man that is young in years may be old in hours if he have lost no time.

Francis Bacon
Physic is of little use to a temperate person, for a man's own observation on what he finds does him good, and what hurts him is the best physic to preserve health.

Francis Bacon
To choose time is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air. There be three parts of business — the preparation, the debate or examination, and the perfection; whereof, if you look for despatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of few.

Francis Bacon
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.

Francis Bacon
Clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature; the mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.

Francis Bacon
As we divided natural philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes, and productions of effects: so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes.

Francis Bacon
It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tosed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth... and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

Francis Bacon
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

Francis Bacon
Virtue is like precious odors — most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

Francis Bacon
Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."

Francis Bacon
The first creation of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and His Sabbath-work ever since is the illumination of the spirit.

Francis Bacon
Time is like a river, in which metals and solid substances are sunk, while chaff and straws swim upon the surface.

Francis Bacon
I knew a wise man who had it for a by-word when he saw men hasten to a conclusion: "Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner."

Francis Bacon