Francis Bacon Quotes
Francis Bacon was a 16th and early 17th-century English philosopher, statesman, and essayist, regarded as one of the founders of the modern scientific method and a major figure of early modern philosophy. His 1620 work Novum Organum proposed a new method of inductive inquiry to replace the deductive logic of Aristotle, and his sweeping vision of organised collaborative scientific research, sketched in The New Atlantis, prefigured the modern research institution. The quotes below are attributed to Francis Bacon, organized by topic.
Browse Francis Bacon by topic
Francis Bacon on God
-
“Meditationes Sacræ [ Sacred Meditations ] (1597), "De Hæresibus" [Of Heresies]”
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.
Francis Bacon on Happiness
-
“Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.”
Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works , Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
Francis Bacon on Knowledge
-
“Knowledge is power.”
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. -
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
Of Studies -
“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 -
Attributed to Francis Bacon:
“Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.”
-
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
Of Studies -
“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 o”
Letter to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (ca. 1593), 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. VIII, p. 109. See also, for approximate date, Mrs. Henry Pott, Francis Bacon and His Secret Society (1891) p. 114 . -
“Essex's Device (1595)”
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power . -
“Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.”
For knowledge itself is power . | Meditationes Sacræ [ Sacred Meditations ] (1597), "De Hæresibus" [Of Heresies]
Francis Bacon on Life
-
“Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad supper.”
No. 36
Francis Bacon on Nature
-
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
Of Beauty https://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francis-bacon-43.html -
“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
Aphorism 3 -
“It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech (…) that are the true ends of knowledge (…), but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them.”
Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works , Vol. I, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
Francis Bacon on Politics
-
Attributed to Francis Bacon:
“The remedy is worse than the disease.”
-
“The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power .”
Essex's Device (1595)
Francis Bacon on Truth
-
“Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.”
Wikiquote -
“Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597), XXIX: "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates.”
Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage ; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.
Francis Bacon on Virtue
-
Attributed to Francis Bacon:
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
-
“Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage ; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.”
Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597), XXIX: "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates.
Things actually not said by Francis Bacon
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Francis Bacon but are in fact from someone else. Did Francis Bacon say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
-
Did Francis Bacon say this? No.
“For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: In an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson , "Solitude and Society" in The Atlantic Monthly , Vol. 1, (December 1857), p. 228, this follows a statement clearly attributed to Bacon, which might be a paraphrase. Without explicit citation, this is added to the parapgraph with quote marks but seems to be a para
-
Did Francis Bacon say this? No.
“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: A translation of chorus lines in a classical tragedy by Seneca the Younger , Thyestes , lines 401-403, appearing in Essays, Civil and Moral by Francis Bacon, part XI, Of Great Place. The original lines in latin are Illi mors gravis incubate/Qui notus nimis omnibus/Ignotus moritur sibi . Inaccurately
-
Did Francis Bacon say this? No.
“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), which may not have been written by Bacon (Disputed.)
-
Did Francis Bacon say this? No.
“Imagination was given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
Attributed to Bacon without citation of work in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 112; this is sometimes attributed to others, also without citation of works, but is most often quoted as an anonymous aphorism, with no published sources yet located prior to The Deke Quarterly , Vol. 56, No. 3 (1938) (Disputed.)