Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

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

Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Wisdom, Truth, Experience

Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense, without prejudice, till you resolve.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Learning, Weakness

The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man or angels come into danger by it.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Desires, Desire, Excess

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.
—Francis Bacon

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Virtue

It was well said that envy keeps no holidays.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Envy

Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Mind, Beliefs, Idleness

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Fame

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Truth

There never was law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Religion, Goodness, Christianity

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

Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.
—Francis Bacon

He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Innovation, Problems, Time Management, Ideas, Change

The reverence of man’s self, is, nest to religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Self-respect

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Prosperity, Success & Failure, Opposition, Adversity

Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but if it light well, it makes virtues shine and vice blush.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Beauty

A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Marriage

The place of justice is a hallowed place.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Justice

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Truth, Mistakes

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Wealth, Fortune

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

Without controversy, learning doth make the mind of men gentle, generous, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Learning

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: One liners, Truth, Authority

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Vision

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Imagination

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
—Francis Bacon

The surest way to prevent seditions is to take away the matter of them; for if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Revolution

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Beauty, Virtues

It was prettily devised of Aesop that the fly sat upon the axletree of the chariot-wheel, and said, “What a dust do I raise!” So are there some vain persons that, whatsoever goeth alone or moveth upon greater means, if they have never so little hand in it, they think it is they that carry it.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Vanity

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
—Francis Bacon
Topics: Painters, Art, Painting

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