Francis Bacon Quotes

English philosopher and statesman (1561–1626)

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Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman and essayist. His works argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observation of events in nature. Most importantly, he argued this could be achieved by use of a sceptical and methodical approach whereby scientists aim to avoid misleading themselves. His general idea of the importance and possibility of a skeptical methodology makes Bacon the father of the scientific method. This marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, the practical details of which are still central in debates about science and methodology today.

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Alternative Names: Franciscus Bacon • Francis Bacon of Verulamius • Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam • Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626 • Francis Bacon, Viscount Saint Alban

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My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads.

Money is a great servant but a bad master.

Knowledge Is Power

If a man is gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world.

İnsanların ölümden korkması çocukların karanlık bir yere girmekten korkmalarına benzer, çocukların doğal korkusunu masallar nasıl arttırırsa, insanın ölüm korkusu da öyle artar.

A man would die, though he were neither valiant, nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft, over and over.

Fortune is like the market; where many times if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation: and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

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

The honorablest part of talk, is to give the occasion; and again to moderate, and pass to somewhat else; for then a man leads the dance.

Es justo esperar de nuestra época muchas más grandes cosas que las de épocas pasadas, pues el mundo, al ser más viejo es más rico en infinidad de observaciones y experiencias

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

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

Men create oppositions, which are not; and put them into new terms, so fixed, as whereas the meaning ought to govern the term, the term in effect governeth the meaning. There be also two false peaces, or unities: the one, when the peace is grounded, but upon an implicit ignorance; for all colors will agree in the dark: the other, when it is pieced up, upon a direct admission of contraries, in fundamental points. For truth and falsehood, in such things, are like the iron and clay, in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image; they may cleave, but they will not incorporate.

I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory of the past events as the snail leaves its slime.
Francis Bacon in conversation in Daniel Farson