Francis Bacon — "The greatest errors are not in the want of power, but in the will."
The greatest errors are not in the want of power, but in the will.
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More from Francis Bacon
"God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures."
"The contemplation of things as they are, without superstition or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."
"Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and better discovereth God's favour."
"For it is a sure rule, that a man were better to be a suitor to the devil, than to a man whose heart is not open."
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all the…"
About Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
English philosopher whose Novum Organum (1620) laid out the inductive method that became the foundation of modern empirical science. Closely associated with Galileo Galilei (contemporary scientific revolutionary). For an intellectual contrast, see Aristotelian scholasticism, the syllogistic, deductive philosophical tradition that ruled medieval universities — Bacon's Novum Organum literally means 'new instrument' — the explicit replacement for Aristotle's Organon. The entire scientific revolution turned on which logic was correct: deduction from authority or induction from observation.
The standard scholarly entry points to Francis Bacon's work: Lisa Jardine (Queen Mary University of London, Renaissance scholar) — Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (1974); Jonathan Marwil (Michigan, intellectual historian) — The Trials of Counsel: Francis Bacon in 1621 (1976); Perez Zagorin (Rochester, historian of ideas) — Francis Bacon (1998). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Francis Bacon.