English philosopher (1561-1626)
Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
We cannot command nature except by obeying her.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
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
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
Knowledge is power.
FRANCIS BACON
Meditationes Sacrae
Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral
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
Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
God Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
All colours will agree in the dark.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Riches are for spending.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays