Francis Bacon Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. The Essays

2. Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

3. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon

4. Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

5. Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure

6. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion

7. A man that is young in years may be old in hours if he have lost no time.

8. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.

9. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? The Essays

10. Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

11. I would address one general admonition to all, that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or for fame, or power, or any of these inferior things, but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity. For it was from lust of power that the Angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell, but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man come in danger by it.

12. Ipsa scientia potestas est.Knowledge itself is power. Meditations Sacrae and Human Philosophy Meditations Sacrae and Human Philosophy

13. Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the mind of all perbutations?

14. Knowledge is power. The real test of knowledge is not whether it is true but whether it empowers us. Scientists usually assume that no theory is 100% correct. Truth, consequently, is a poor test for knowledge. The real test is utility. A theory that enables us to do new things constitutes knowledge. Neues Organon, Volume 1...

15. Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game The Oxford Francis Bacon IV: The Advancement of Learning

16. Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

17. They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. The Oxford Francis Bacon IV: The Advancement of Learning

18. Wonder is the seed of knowledge