Roger Bacon Quotes on Truth
Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and early advocate of experimental method, sometimes called Doctor Mirabilis. This page collects quotes attributed to Roger Bacon on the topic of truth, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Roger Bacon:
“Argument can prove nothing; experience alone can give certainty.”
-
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.”
-
Attributed to Roger Bacon:
“Without experiment nothing can be known sufficiently.”
-
“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