FRANCIS BACON QUOTES IV

English philosopher (1561-1626)

Good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: thought


They that deny a God destroy man's nobility, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: God


Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: Truth


Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: death


A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: virtue


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

Essays

Tags: love


Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself, above human frailty.

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Atheism", Essays

Tags: atheism


Since there must be borrowing and lending, and men are so hard of heart as they will not lend freely, usury must be permitted.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: lending


Libraries ... are as the shrines where all the relics of ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays Or Counsels

Tags: library


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

"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral

Tags: youth


The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

FRANCIS BACON

Essex's Device

Tags: wit


Knowledge is power.

FRANCIS BACON

Meditationes Sacrae

Tags: knowledge


Wise judges have prescribed that men may not rashly believe the confessions of witches, nor the evidence against them; for the witches themselves are imaginative; and people are credulous, and ready to impute accidents to witchcraft.

FRANCIS BACON

Natural History

Tags: witchcraft


It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum


The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum

Tags: opinion


Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum

Tags: knowledge


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

Novum Organum

Tags: possibility


We cannot command nature except by obeying her.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum

Tags: nature


The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum

Tags: understanding


The real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of human life with new commodities.

FRANCIS BACON

Novum Organum

Tags: science