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Philosophical Quotations |
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Bacon, Francis 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. -- Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning About nature consult nature herself. -- Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are. -- Francis Bacon, Of Seeming Wise Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally according to custom. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. -- Francis Bacon, Essays It will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and as it were three grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country; which kind is vulgar and degenerate. The second is of those who labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion 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 thing and a more noble 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, Novum Organum A civil war is like the heat of a fever; but a foreign war is like the heat of exercise, and serveth to keep the body in health. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Custom is the principal magistrate of man's life. -- Francis Bacon, Essays 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;…that knowledge may not be as a courtesan, for pleasure and vanity only, or as a bondwoman, to acquire and gain to her master's use, but as a spouse, for generation, fruit, and comfort. -- Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosphy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. -- Francis Bacon, Essays The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called "sciences as one would." For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. -- Francis Bacon, Of Marriage and Single Life Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Liberty of Speech inviteth and provoketh liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge. -- Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Ambition is like choler; which is an humour that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring, if it be not stopped. But if it be stopped, and cannot have his way, it becometh adust, and therby malign and venomous. So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye. -- Francis Bacon, Of Ambition Certainly, great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when perhaps they find the contrary within. -- Francis Bacon, Of Great Place Fame, if like a river, beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid. -- Francis Bacon, Of Praise Honour is, or should be, the place of virtue; and, as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place; so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great places is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. -- Francis Bacon, Of Great Place I have taken all knowledge to by my province. -- Francis Bacon, Letter to Lord Burleigh Knowledge and human power are synonymous. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. Knowledge itself is power. -- Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations One method of delivery alone remains to us; which is simply this: we must lead men to the particulars themselves; and their series and order; while men on their side must force themselves for awhile to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum The idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions, as well of the sense as of the mind, are according to the measures of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum 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, Novum Organum Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread. -- Francis Bacon, Essays 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, Novum Organum Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Philosophers should diligently inquire into the powers and energy of custom, exercise, habit, education, example, imitation, emulation, company, friendship, praise, reproof, exhortation, reputation, laws, books, studies, etc.; for these are the things that reign in men's morals; by these agents the mind is formed and subdued. -- Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth man's mind about to religion. -- Francis Bacon, Essays No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth. -- Francis Bacon, Essays And generally let every student of nature take this as a rule -- that whatever the mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken in dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum The causes and motives of sedition are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending a people joineth them in a common cause. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Of great riches there is no real use, except in the distribution; the rest is but conceit. -- Francis Bacon, Essays The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the praise of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. -- Francis Bacon, Essays Be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others. -- Francis Bacon, Essays But the Idols of the Market-place are the most troublesome of all idols which have crept into the understanding through the alliances of words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words; but it is also true that words react on the understanding and this it is that had rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive. Now words, being commonly framed and applied according to the capacity of the vulgar, follow those lines of division which are most obvious to the vulgar understanding. And whenever understanding of greater acuteness or a more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true divisions of nature, words stand in the way and resist the change. Whence it comes to pass that the high and formal discussions of learned men and often-times in disputes about words and names; with which (according to the use and wisdom of the mathematicians) it would be more prudent to begin, and so by means of definitions reduce them to order. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum The universe is not to be narrowed down to the limits of the Understanding, -- but the Understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the Unvierse as it is discovered. |
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