FRANCIS BACON QUOTES VI

English philosopher (1561-1626)

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


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


Knowledge is power.

FRANCIS BACON

Meditationes Sacrae

Tags: knowledge


The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

FRANCIS BACON

Essex's Device

Tags: wit


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


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


God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: gardening


Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: death


A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: revenge


Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: marriage


Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: fame


Chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: fortune


Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: virtue


Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: nobility


There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

FRANCIS BACON

Essays

Tags: beauty