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Francis Bacon Quotes
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Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author. He served both as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.

Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. 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. While his own practical ideas about such a method, the Baconian method, did not have a long lasting influence, the general idea of the importance and possibility of a sceptical methodology makes Bacon the father of 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. In addition to his work in the sciences, Bacon was also a venerable patron of libraries and developed a functional system for the cataloging of books by dividing them into three categories- history, poesy, and philosophy- which could further be divided into more specific subjects and subheadings.

Bacon was generally neglected at court by Queen Elizabeth, but after the accession of King James I in 1603, Bacon was knighted. He was later created Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Alban in 1621. Because he had no heirs, both titles became extinct upon his death in 1626, at 65 years of age. Bacon died of pneumonia, with one account by John Aubrey stating that he had contracted the condition while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He is buried at St Michael's Church, St Albans, Hertfordshire.

✵ 22. January 1561 – 9. April 1626  •  Other names Sir Francis Bacon
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Francis Bacon: 295 quotes26 likes

Francis Bacon Quotes

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”

Francis Bacon

“Knowledge itself is power.”
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.

Francis Bacon

Meditationes Sacræ [Sacred Meditations] (1597) "De Hæresibus" [Of Heresies]
Variants:
Scientia Ipsa Potentia Est.
Scientia potentia est.
Knowledge is power.
Scientia potestas est.
Scientia est potentia.
Source: Meditations Sacrae and Human Philosophy Meditations Sacrae and Human Philosophy

“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Studies
Essays (1625)

“In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Revenge
Essays (1625)
Variant: Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.

“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”

Francis Bacon

“The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.”

Francis Bacon

Essex's Device (1595)

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II, vii, 5
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“The worst solitute is to be destitute of true friendship.”

Francis Bacon

“Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.”

Francis Bacon

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

Francis Bacon

Variant: He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.

“The remedy is worse than the disease.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Seditions and Troubles
Essays (1625)

“A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Friendship
Essays (1625)

“Silence is the virtue of a fool.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book VI, xxxi
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”

Francis Bacon

“Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Seditions and Troubles
Essays (1625)
Source: The Essays

“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Innovations
Essays (1625)

“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.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Source: The Essays

“By far the best proof is experience.”

Francis Bacon

“There Are But Two Tragedies in Life-One is One's Inability to attain One's Heart's Desire-The Other Is To Have It!”

Francis Bacon

“It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Truth
Essays (1625)

“We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II, xxi, 9
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“Costly followers are not to be liked; lest while a man maketh his train longer, he make his wings shorter.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Followers and Friends
Essays (1625)

“Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."”

Francis Bacon

No. 206
Apophthegms (1624)

“It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech … that are the true ends of knowledge … but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them.”

Francis Bacon

Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603) Works, Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819) p. 133, https://books.google.com/books?id=xgE9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA133 Vol. 2

“In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works we may very properly apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works; accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 73
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

“Men's thoughts, are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches, according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds, are after as they have been accustomed.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Custom and Education
Essays (1625)

“Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Judicature
Essays (1625)

“It is a strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Great Place
Essays (1625)

“The greatness of an estate, in bulk and territory, doth fall under measure; and the greatness of finances and revenue, doth fall under computation. The population may appear by musters; and the number and greatness of cities and towns by cards and maps. But yet there is not any thing amongst civil affairs more subject to error, than the right valuation and true judgment concerning the power and forces of an estate.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

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

“It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Cunning
Essays (1625)

“Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Nature in Men
Essays (1625)

“If thou shalt aspire after the glorious acts of men, thy working shall be accompanied with compunction and strife, and thy remembrance followed with distaste and upbraidings; and justly doth it come to pass towards thee, O man, that since thou, which art God's work, doest him no reason in yielding him well-pleasing service, even thine own works also should reward thee with the like fruit of bitterness.”

Francis Bacon

Of The Works Of God and Man
Meditationes sacræ (1597)

“In charity there is no excess.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature
Essays (1625)

“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.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book VII, 3
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 29
Novum Organum (1620), Book II