Francis Bacon - Novum Organum (1620)

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But we are not dedicating or building any Capitol or Pyramid to human Pride, but found a holy temple in the human Intellect, on the model of the Universe... For whatever is worthy of Existence is worthy of Knowledge-which is the Image (or Echo) of Existence.

Francis Bacon
It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.

Francis Bacon
I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from the simple sensuous perception.

Francis Bacon
It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

Francis Bacon
There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names — calling the first class, Idols of the Tribe ; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.

Francis Bacon
But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this — that men despair and think things impossible.

Francis Bacon
For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes.

Francis Bacon
It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries, and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origins, though recent, are obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's needle [compass]…these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.

Francis Bacon
No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

Francis Bacon
Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.

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
We must first, by every kind of experiment, elicit the discovery of causes and true axioms, and seek for experiments which may afford light rather than profit.

Francis Bacon
Astrology... is so full of superstition, that scarce anything sound can be discovered in it...

Francis Bacon
The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes the wrong one.

Francis Bacon
Those who have treated of the sciences have been either empirics or dogmatical. The former like ants only heap up and use their store, the latter like spiders spin out their own webs. The bee, a mean between both, extracts matter from the flower of the garden and the field, but works and fashions it by its own efforts.

Francis Bacon
It would indeed be dishonourable to mankind, if the regions of the material globe, the earth, the sea, and stars should be so prodigiously developed and illustrated in our age, and yet the boundaries of the intellectual globe should be confined to the narrow discoveries of the ancients.

Francis Bacon
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 in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

Francis Bacon
All superstition is much the same whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omen, retributive judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common.

Francis Bacon
The lame in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it, and it is clear that the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not in the right direction must increase his aberration.

Francis Bacon
Even the effects already discovered are due to chance and experiment, rather than to the sciences; for our present sciences are nothing more than peculiar arrangements of matters already discovered, and not methods for discovery or plans for new operations.

Francis Bacon
Let us begin from God, and show that our pursuit from its exceeding goodness clearly proceeds from him, the Author of good and Father of light.

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

Francis Bacon
We have no sound notions either in logic or physics; substance, quality, action, passion, and existence are not clear notions; much less weight, levity, density, tenuity, moisture, dryness, generation, corruption, attraction, repulsion, element, matter, form, and the like. They are all fantastical and ill-defined.

Francis Bacon
Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, dies and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to things or the mind permit him, and neither knows or is capable of more.

Francis Bacon
Man always believes more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation.

Francis Bacon
It is rightly laid down that 'true knowledge is knowledge by causes'. Also the establishment of four causes is not bad: material, formal, efficient and final.

Francis Bacon