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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.

— Francis Bacon Novum Organum (1620)

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Knowledge

More quotes by Francis Bacon

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

The Advancement of Learning (1605)

But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

The Advancement of Learning (1605)

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.

The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.

Novum Organum (1620)

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

Essex's Device (1595)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

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Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Bertrand Russell

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Francis Bacon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.