“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”

—  Francis Bacon

Of Studies
Essays (1625)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhet…" by Francis Bacon?
Francis Bacon photo
Francis Bacon 295
English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and auth… 1561–1626

Related quotes

Quirinus Kuhlmann photo

“My poem (Love -Kisses XL1) is like a nugget of gold or clump of earth it contains within itself the seeds rhetoric, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, geography, music, astronomy, medicine, nature, law, writing”

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689) German poet and mystic

Love-Kiss XL1

Thomas Hobbes photo

“For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 61
Leviathan (1651)

Ernesto Grassi photo

“Thus the true philosophy is rhetoric, and the true rhetoric is philosophy, a philosophy which does not need an “external” rhetoric to convince, and a rhetoric that does not need an “external” content of verity.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), pp. 31-32
Context: In the second part of the Phaedrus Plato attempts to clarify the nature of “true” rhetoric. … it does not arise from a posterior unity which presupposes the duality of ratio and passio, but illuminates and influences the passions through its original, imaginative characters. Thus philosophy is not a posterior synthesis of pathos and logos but the original unity of the two under the power of the original archai. Plato sees true rhetoric as psychology which can fulfill its truly “moving” function only if it masters original images [eide]. Thus the true philosophy is rhetoric, and the true rhetoric is philosophy, a philosophy which does not need an “external” rhetoric to convince, and a rhetoric that does not need an “external” content of verity.

“In many ways it is true to say that syntax is mathematical logic, semantics is philosophy or philosophy of science, and pragmatics is psychology, but these fields are not really all distinct.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.42 as cited in: Sica Pettigiani (1996) La comunicazione interumana. p.48

“The unnaturalness of mathematical symbolism is attested to by history. The algebra of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Hindus, and the Arabs was what is commonly called rhetorical algebra. …on the whole they used ordinary rhetoric to describe their mathematical work. Symbolism is a relatively modern invention of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and the Physical World (1959), p. 59

“I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.
I've a pain in my head,
I wish I was dead.
In a coffin of lead—
With the Wise and the Brave—
I wish I was dead,
And lay deep in the grave.”

Maurice Baring (1874–1945) English writer

"Jean Francois", from Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches.

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Elizabeth I of England photo

“Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

To Sir Edward Dyer, as quoted in Apophthegms (1625) by Francis Bacon

“In the history of mathematics, the "how" always preceded the "why," the technique of the subject preceded its philosophy.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Number: The Language of Science (1930)

“Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 38.

Related topics