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“For I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practical enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man, and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions.”

Francis Bacon

Source: Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603) Works, Vol. 1; The Works of Francis Bacon (1857) p. 232, https://books.google.com/books?id=HloJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA232 Vol. 3.

“Virtue is like precious odors — most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Adversity
Essays (1625)

“This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book VII, 7
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, “It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.””

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Adversity
Essays (1625)

“For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Love
Essays (1625)

“Beware of sudden change, in any great point of diet, and, if necessity inforce it, fit the rest to it. For it is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things, than one.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Regimen of Health
Essays (1625)

“It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 6
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

“We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to Nature the anticipation of Nature (as being rash and premature) and that which is properly deduced from things the interpretation of Nature.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Novum Organum (1620)

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that traveleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Travel
Essays (1625)

“Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Revenge
Essays (1625)

“Suspicions amongst thoughts, are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight. Certainly they are to be repressed, or at least well guarded: for they cloud the mind; they leese friends; and they check with business, whereby business cannot go on currently and constantly. They dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jealousy, wise men to irresolution and melancholy. They are defects, not in the heart, but in the brain; for they take place in the stoutest natures.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Suspicion
Essays (1625)

“Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Empire
Essays (1625)

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

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Delays
Essays (1625)

“The great atheists, indeed are hypocrites; which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Atheism
Essays (1625)

“The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond… But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 48
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

“Discretion of speech, is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him, with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Discourse
Essays (1625)

“He that commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
Essays (1625)

“The greatest trust, between man and man, is the trust of giving counsel. For in other confidences, men commit the parts of life; their lands, their goods, their children, their credit, some particular affair; but to such as they make their counsellors, they commit the whole: by how much the more, they are obliged to all faith and integrity.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Counsel
Essays (1625)

“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.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 129
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

“Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book I, iv, 10
The Advancement of Learning (1605)