Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman and essayist.
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- The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
- Essex's Device (1595)
- Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.
- Knowledge is power.
- Meditationes Sacræ [Sacred Meditations] (1597) "De Hæresibus" [Of Heresies]
- I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or (if one take it favourably) philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see, that place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment of more wits than of a man's own; which is the thing I greatly affect.
- Letter to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, published in The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England 14 Vols. (1870) James Spedding, Robert L. Ellis, Douglas D. Heath, editors, Vol. XIII p. 109
- Aristotle... a mere bond-servant to his logic, thereby rendering it contentious and well nigh useless.
- Rerum Novarum (1605)
- I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defense. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.
- On being charged by Parliament with corruption in office (1621)
- Lucid intervals and happy pauses.
- History of King Henry VII, III (1622)
- Nil terribile nisi ipse timor.
- Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
- De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, Fortitudo (1623)
- Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
- De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, Antitheta (1623)
- Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret.
- Translated: "Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick".
- De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623)
- I bequeath my soul to God... My body to be buried obscurely. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age.
- From his will (1626)
- We have also sound houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear to do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as if it were tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in tubes and pipes, in strange lines and distances...
- New Atlantis (1627)
- It is true that that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
- Sylva Sylvarum century x (1627)
- …death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
- An Essay on Death published in The Remaines of the Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam (1648) but may not have been written by Bacon
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.- For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
- Book I, i, 3
- Time, which is the author of authors.
- Book I, iv, 12
- If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
- Book I, v, 8
- Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi. [The age of antiquity is the youth of the world.] These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.
- Book I, v, 8
- The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
- Book I, v, 11
- The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical: because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence: because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations: so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of things.
- Book II, iv, 2
- They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
- Book II, vii, 5
- But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
- Book II, xx, 8
- We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
- Book II, xxi, 9
- All good moral philosophy is but the handmaid to religion.
- Book II, xxii, 14
- For man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection: and they be three wisdoms of divers natures, which do often sever: wisdom of the behaviour, wisdom of business, and wisdom of state.
- Book II, xxiii
- Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt
- seek first the virtues of the mind; and other things either will come, or will not be wanted
- Book II, xxxi
- Silence is the virtue of a fool.
- Book VI, xxxi
Descriptio Globi Intellectus (1612)
- Art is man added to Nature Descriptio Globi Intellectus (1612)
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Absolutearts.com Sir Francis Bacon best encapsulated the ethos when he wrote in the 1623 De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum that nature is to be "put in constraint, ...
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