Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was a great English natural philosopher, statesman, and pioneer of modern scientific thought. Bacon’s abundant writing spanned scientific methodology, religion, moral philosophy, and judicial administration.
Bacon started his political career at age 23 when he became a Member of Parliament. He opposed Queen Elizabeth I’s tax program, fell out of her favor, and encountered difficulty advancing his career. After James I acceded the throne in 1603, Bacon’s career flourished; he ultimately rose to become the Lord Chancellor, one of Britain’s highest political offices. However, his political career ended in disgrace in 1621 when the British Parliament incriminated him for accepting bribes and banished him from holding public office. King James I revoked Bacon’s sentence and allowed him to write in retirement.
Bacon’s real interests lay in science. He challenged the Aristotelian notion that scientific truth could be reached through an authoritative argument (wherein knowledgeable people discuss a subject long enough to ascertain the truth eventually.) In his early text, Cogitata et Visa (1607,) Bacon first proposed the idea of inductive reasoning. And in his best-known work, Novum Organum (1620,) Bacon not only advocated observable evidence and rational investigation but also promoted the dismissal of hypotheses founded on incomplete and insufficient proof. His philosophy, now known as the scientific method, has since been the basis of all experimental science.
Interestingly, Bacon’s scientific method ultimately took his life. When journeying in the snow-filled countryside one day, Bacon hit upon the idea of using snow to preserve meat. To test his hypothesis, Bacon purchased a fowl and stuffed it with snow. Later that day, he developed a cold that advanced into pneumonia and killed him.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Francis Bacon
Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man’s self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Envy
Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
—Francis Bacon
God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: God
We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom, and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man, not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Cunning
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; for men’s minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others’ evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain to another’s virtue, will seek to come at even hand by depressing another’s fortune.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Envy
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
—Francis Bacon
Seek not proud wealth; but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly, yet have not any abstract or friarly contempt of it.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Wealth, Desire, Gratitude, Blessings, Appreciation
They are the best laws, by which the king has the greatest prerogative, and the people the best liberty.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Law
He that follows nature is never out of his way. Nature is sometimes subdued, but seldom extinguished.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Nature
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Death, Fear
Knowledge is power. Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man’s progress is to feel the great heartthrobs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Power, Education, Knowledge, Now
Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Knowledge
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
—Francis Bacon
Time is the measure of business as money is of wares; and business is bought at a dear hand where there is small despatch. The Spartans and Spaniards have been noted to be of small despatch, and hence the maxim, “Let my death come from Spain”; for then it will be long in coming.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Time, Business
It is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Heaven, Charity
Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength. Of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter, less.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Self-reliance, Strength
Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with an expectation of good.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Hope
Liberty of speech inviteth and provoketh liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man’s knowledge.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Liberty
Who taught the parrot his “Welcome”? Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree where she espied water, that the water might rise so as she might come to it? Who taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea of air, and to find the way from a flower in a field to her hive? Who taught, the ant to bite every grain of corn that she burieth in her hill, lest it should take root and grow?
—Francis Bacon
That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Change
The reverence of man’s self, is, nest to religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Self-respect
In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Nature
What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Truth
The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Friendship
Mysteries are due to secrecy.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Mystery
All colors will agree in the dark.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Prejudice
Great effects come of industry and perseverance; for audacity doth almost bind and mate the weaker sort of minds.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Perseverance
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Truth
The illiberality of parents, in allowance toward their children, is a harmful error, and makes them base; acquaints them with shirts; makes them sort with mean company; and makes them surfeit more when they come to plenty; and therefore the proof is best when men keep their authority toward their children, but not their purse.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Parents
Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. Anger must be limited and confined, both in race and in time.
—Francis Bacon
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