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.

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Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Youth

Nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body, and it addeth no small reverence to men’s manners and actions if they be not altogether open. Therefore set it down: That a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral.
Francis Bacon

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Revenge

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Dissent, Opposition

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Truth

In thinking, if a person begins with certainties, they shall end in doubts, but if they can begin with doubts, they will end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Doubt, Thought, Certainty, Thoughts

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Bible

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Magic

All precepts concerning kings are comprehended in these: remember thou art a man; remember thou art God’s vicegerent.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Kings

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Learning

As the births of living creatures, at first, are ill-shapen: so are all Innovations, which are the births of time.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Innovation

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

He that cometh to seek after knowledge with a mind to scorn and censure shall be sure to find matter for his humor, but none for his instruction.
Francis Bacon

There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Friendship

Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Hope

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Reading

It is a strange desire, to seek power and lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains, and it is sometimes base; and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Power, Insults

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Humankind, Humanity

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

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

The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.
Francis Bacon

When the soul resolves to perform every duty, immediately it is conscious of the presence of God.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Duty

Wives are young men’s mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men’s nurses.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Wife, Marriage, Society

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Poetry, Medicine, Poets

When ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Nature

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Mathematics, Wit

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Service

The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Responsibility, Fortune

Reading maketh a full man; conference, a ready man: histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral philosophy, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Francis Bacon
Topics: Knowledge, Historians, History

To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.
Francis Bacon

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