Francis Bacon Quotes

Francis Bacon Quote: It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
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It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Francis Bacon (Of Death, 1625)

There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.

Francis Bacon (The New Organon - Book I, 1620)

In the mathematics I can report no deficience, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand this excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put itself into all postures, so in the mathematics that use which is collateral and intervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal and intended.

Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning - Book II, 1605)

Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

Francis Bacon (Of Truth, 1625)

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

Francis Bacon

Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Francis Bacon (Of Revenge, 1625)

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

Francis Bacon (Letter of Expostulation to Coke)

Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.

Francis Bacon (The New Organon - Book I, 1620)

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 (Of Studies, 1625)

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence.

Francis Bacon (Of Discourse, 1625)

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

Francis Bacon (Quoted in Francis Bacon: The Major Works, 2002)

As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time. (On Innovation)

Francis Bacon

It is true that 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 (Sylva Sylvarum Century X, 1627)

Knowledge is power.

Francis Bacon (Sacred Meditations, 1597)

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Francis Bacon Biography

Born: January 22, 1561
Died: April 9, 1626

Sir Francis Bacon was an English philosopher, statesman, writer, scientist, and lawyer. He has had an big influence on philosophy and science. He has also been called as the father of empiricism.

Notable Works

Essays (1597)
The Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605)
The Wisdom of the Ancients (1619)
Novum Organum (1620)
New Atlantis (1626)
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