Francis Bacon Quotes

English philosopher and statesman (1561–1626)

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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Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

by indignities men come to dignities

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

It is a poor centre of a man's actions, himself.

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

Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.

If you really love life you're walking in the shadow of death all the time...Death is the shadow of life, and the more one is obsessed with life the more one is obsesses with death. I'm greedy for life and I'm greedy as an artist.
Francis Bacon in conversation in Daniel Farson

The folly of one man is the fortune of another.

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.

Algunos libros son probados, otros devorados, poquísimos masticados y digeridos.

What then remains but that we still should cry Not to be born, or, being born, to die?

As we divided natural philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes, and productions of effects: so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes.

All colours will agree in the dark

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God’s favor.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested.

Francis Bacon Quotes

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