Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was a great English natural philosopher, statesman, and pioneer of modern scientific thought. Bacon’s abundant writing spanned scientific methodology, religion, moral philosophy, and judicial administration.
Bacon started his political career at age 23 when he became a Member of Parliament. He opposed Queen Elizabeth I’s tax program, fell out of her favor, and encountered difficulty advancing his career. After James I acceded the throne in 1603, Bacon’s career flourished; he ultimately rose to become the Lord Chancellor, one of Britain’s highest political offices. However, his political career ended in disgrace in 1621 when the British Parliament incriminated him for accepting bribes and banished him from holding public office. King James I revoked Bacon’s sentence and allowed him to write in retirement.
Bacon’s real interests lay in science. He challenged the Aristotelian notion that scientific truth could be reached by means of authoritative argument (wherein knowledgeable people discuss a subject long enough to eventually ascertain the truth.) In his early text, Cogitata et Visa (1607,) Bacon first proposed the idea of inductive reasoning. And in his best-known work, Novum Organum (1620,) Bacon not only advocated observable evidence and rational investigation, but also promoted the dismissal of hypotheses founded on incomplete and insufficient proof. His philosophy, now known as the scientific method, has since been the basis of all experimental science.
Interestingly, Bacon’s scientific method ultimately took his life. When journeying in the snow-filled countryside one day, Bacon hit upon the idea of using snow to preserve meat. To test his hypothesis, Bacon purchased a fowl and stuffed it with snow. Later that day, he developed a cold that advanced into pneumonia and killed him.
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The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.
—Francis Bacon
Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Adversity, Success & Failure, Prosperity
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Vision
But this is that which will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been … .
—Francis Bacon
If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Mathematics
If a man be gracious to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world, and his heart is no island, cut off from other islands, but a continent that joins them.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Kindness
For knowledge, too, is itself power.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Knowledge
A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Success, Opportunity, Confidence, Self-reliance, Opportunities, Wisdom, One liners
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Books, Reading
Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences; whence it is bad in council though good in execution. — The right use of the bold, therefore, is, that they never command in chief, but serve as seconds under the direction of others. — For in council it is good to see dangers, and in execution not to see them unless they be very great.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Bravery
Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.
—Francis Bacon
A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Wisdom, Questions
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Truth
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
—Francis Bacon
By far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses.
—Francis Bacon
Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined, both in race and in time.
—Francis Bacon
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
—Francis Bacon
In contemplation, if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Imagination, Risk-taking, Doubt, Difficulty, Discovery, Uncertainty
Knowledge itself is power.
—Francis Bacon
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
—Francis Bacon
Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
—Francis Bacon
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Fear, Desire
By far the greatest impediment and aberration of the human understanding arises from (the fact that)… those things which strike the sense outweigh things which, although they may be more important, do not strike it directly. Hence, contemplation usually ceases with seeing, so much so that little or no attention is paid to things invisible.
—Francis Bacon
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
—Francis Bacon
Science is the labor and handicraft of the mind.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Science
It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
—Francis Bacon
Knowledge is power. Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge — broad, deep knowledge — is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man’s progress is to feel the great heartthrobs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Education, Power, Knowledge
There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Wisdom
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
—Francis Bacon
Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Applause
Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.
—Francis Bacon
Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Questions
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Anger, Forgiveness, Revenge
Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with an expectation of good.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Hope
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
—Francis Bacon
Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Mistakes, Truth
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.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Youth
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
Topics: Riches
Seek first the virtues of the mind; and other things either will come, or will not be wanted.
—Francis Bacon
Money makes a good servant, but a bad master.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Money
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Hope
Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.
—Francis Bacon
Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Friendship
Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Money
Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Fear
Man ought to know that in the theater of human life, it is only for Gods and angels to be spectators.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Life
The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Friendship
Opportunity makes a thief.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Opportunity, Progress
Men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so that they have no freedom, neither in their persons, in their actions, nor in their times.—It is a strange desire to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Greatness, Power, Service, Servants
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Reading
A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Time, Carpe-diem
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
It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.
—Francis Bacon
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Wisdom
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- David Hume Scottish Philosopher, Historian
- Alfred North Whitehead English Mathematician