Francis Bacon on Knowledge
1561–1626 England
← All quotes by Francis Bacon
10 quotes
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.
Words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.
Novum Organum (1620)
Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up.
I have taken all knowledge to be my province.
The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
Novum Organum (1620)
For knowledge, too, is itself a power.
Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.
Novum Organum (1620)
The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.
Novum Organum (1620)
The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so.
Novum Organum (1620)