Francis Bacon Quotes

A man dies as often as he loses his friends.

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of Man.

Time is the greatest innovator.

It is a poore Center of a Mans Actions, Himselfe.

Riches are for spending.

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.

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 these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.

The virtue of prosperity is temperance the virtue of adversity is fortitude.

The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one ... the more active and swift the latter is the further he will go astray.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.

We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, and cities have been decayed and demolished?

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.

man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.

It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.

If a man looks sharply and attentively he shall see fortune for though she be blind yet she is not invisible.

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

Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.

Money is like muck - not good unless it be spread.

If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts but if he will content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.

Money is a great servant but a bad master.

The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure, it's a little like making love, the physical act of love.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted ...but to weigh and consider.