Roger Bacon Quotes
Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and early advocate of experimental method, sometimes called Doctor Mirabilis. Trained at Oxford and Paris, he produced the Opus Majus at the request of Pope Clement IV, an encyclopedic argument that the study of languages, mathematics, optics, and experimental science was essential to Christian learning. The quotes below are attributed to Roger Bacon, organized by topic.
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Roger Bacon on Happiness
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“Oh how delightful is the taste of wisdom to those who are thus steeped in it from its very fount and origin. They who have not tried this cannot feel the delight of wisdom, just as a sick man cannot estimate the flavour of food. But because they are affected with this sort of mental sickness, and their intellect in this matter is as it were deaf from their very birth, so as not to appreciate the delight of harmony, on this account they grieve not at this so great loss of wisdom, though indeed without doubt it is an infinite loss.”
Compendium Studii Theologiae (1292) c. viii. & Brewer's Bacon (1859) p. 466 as cited by George Gresley Perry , The Life and Times of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (1871)
Roger Bacon on Knowledge
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Attributed to Roger Bacon:
“Argument can prove nothing; experience alone can give certainty.”
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“Mathematics is the gate and key to the sciences.”
cited in: Morris Kline (1969) Mathematics and the physical world . p. 1 -
Attributed to Roger Bacon:
“Without experiment nothing can be known sufficiently.”
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Attributed to Roger Bacon:
“All knowledge proceeds from God, and all wisdom is from him.”
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“For sounds like thunder, and coruscations like lightning, may be made in the air, and they may be rendered even more horrible than those of nature herself. A small quantity of matter, properly manufactured, not larger than the human thumb, may be made to produce a horrible noise and coruscation. And this may be done many ways, by which a city or an army may be destroyed, as was the case when Gideo”
De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magise , Ch. 6, in a reference to Bacon's knowledge of gunpowder, as quoted by Thomas Thomson , The History of Chemistry (1830) Vol. 1, p. 36. -
“Mix together saltpetre , luru vopo vir con utriet [powdered charcoal], and sulphur , and you will make thunder and lightning, if you know the method of mixing them.”
De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magise , Ch. 11, in a reference to Bacon's knowledge of making gunpowder, as quoted by Thomas Thomson , The History of Chemistry (1830) Vol. 1, p. 36. -
“Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae.”
To ask the proper question is half of knowing . | Cited in: LIFE , 8 sept 1958, p. 73 Variant translation : Half of science is asking the right questions. -
“To ask the proper question is half of knowing .”
Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae. -
“Argument is conclusive... but... it does not remove doubt , so that the mind may never rest in the sure knowledge of the truth , unless it finds it by the method of experiment . For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns, his hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.”
Cited in: Carol A. Dingle (2000) Memorable Quotations: Philosophers of Western Civilization . p. 21
Roger Bacon on Life
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“Compendium Studii Theologiae (1292) c. viii. & Brewer's Bacon (1859) p. 466 as cited by George Gresley Perry , The Life and Times of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (1871)”
Oh how delightful is the taste of wisdom to those who are thus steeped in it from its very fount and origin. They who have not tried this cannot feel the delight of wisdom, just as a sick man cannot estimate the flavour of food. But because they are affected with this sort of mental sickness, and their intellect in this matter is as it were deaf from their very birth, so as not to appreciate the d
Roger Bacon on Nature
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“For sounds like thunder, and coruscations like lightning, may be made in the air, and they may be rendered even more horrible than those of nature herself. A small quantity of matter, properly manufactured, not larger than the human thumb, may be made to produce a horrible noise and coruscation. And this may be done many ways, by which a city or an army may be destroyed, as was the case when Gideon and his men broke their pitchers and exhibited their lamps, fire issuing out of them with inestimable noise, destroyed an infinite number of the army of the Midianites .”
De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae et de Nullitate Magise , Ch. 6, in a reference to Bacon's knowledge of gunpowder, as quoted by Thomas Thomson , The History of Chemistry (1830) Vol. 1, p. 36. -
“Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical .”
Cited by Peter Nicholls (1979) The Encyclopedia of science fiction: an illustrated A to Z . p. 376 -
“I shall draw ... a figure (which all these matters are made clear as far as possible on a surface, but the full demonstration would require a body like the eye... The eye of a cow, pig, and other animals can be used for illustration, if anyone wishes to experiment.”
Opus Majus, c. 1267 | v. i. iii. 3, ed. Bridges as quoted in A.C. Crombie , Robert Grossetest and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)
Roger Bacon on Truth
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Attributed to Roger Bacon:
“There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned: the influence of frail and unworthy authority, long-established custom, the sense of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of one's ignorance behind a show of wisdom.”
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“Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth , unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.”
Opus Majus, c. 1267 | In: Robert Belle Burke (2002) The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon Part 2 . p. 583