Francis Bacon
Father of the scientific method
Most quoted
"Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled: Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again; and at the last took occasion to chide their weakness and slavish disposition."
— from Essays, 1625
"For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; but it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not regulated and corrected by the rules of true philosophy."
— from The Advancement of Learning, 1605
"The true method of experience first lights the candle, and then by means of the candle shows the way; commencing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested, not bungling or erratic, and from it eliciting axioms, and from established axioms again new experiments."
— from Novum Organum, 1620
All quotes by Francis Bacon (233)
Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them.
For the unlearned, the world is a book in a foreign tongue.
God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.
Silence is the virtue of fools.
The only way to conquer nature is to obey her.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, and not when it misses.
For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read much, to suffer much, and to love much.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it.
It is not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.
The greatest glory of a freeborn people is to transmit that freedom to their children.
Discretion of speech is more than eloquence.
The world's a bubble, and the life of man less than a span.
All colors will agree in the dark.
The proper study of mankind is man.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Contemporaries of Francis Bacon
Other Philosophys born within 50 years of Francis Bacon (1561–1626).