Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, PC QC was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. Powerful collection of profoundly inspirational Francis Bacon Quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.

If you’re searching for quotes from greatest philosophers that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Heraclitus, powerful John Stuart Mill quotes and famous John Locke quotes.

Famous Francis Bacon Quotes

God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled it you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body and reduce it to harmony.

Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?

The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes the wrong one.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them that despair of them.

The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

To choose time is to save time.

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

Let the mind be enlarged to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind

Natures that have much heat, and great and violent desires and perturbations, are not ripe for action till they have passed the meridian of their years.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

Envy is ever joined with the comparing of a man’s self; and where there is no comparison, no envy.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Again there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress; which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

Riches are for spending, and spending for honor and good actions; therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion.

I usually accept bribes from both sides so that tainted money can never influence my decision.

Money is a great servant but a bad master.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted …but to weigh and consider.

Inspirational Francis Bacon Quotes

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

A false friend is more dangerous than an open enemy.

A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.

The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success.

You cannot teach a child to take care of himself unless you will let him try to take care of himself. He will make mistakes and out of these mistakes will come his wisdom.

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.

Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing.

Time is like a river, in which metals and solid substances are sunk, while chaff and straws swim upon the surface.

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

The weakness of patients, and sweetness of life, and nature of hope, maketh men depend upon physicians with all their defects.

The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

Tunes and airs have in themselves some affinity with the affections.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

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

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

The master of superstition is the people.

Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.

Wonder is the seed of knowledge.

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

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires.

There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man’s self; the first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy the second, dissimulation in the negative the third, simulation in the affirmative.

In one and the same fire, clay grows hard and wax melts.

It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.

Top Francis Bacon Quotes

Nay, number itself in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for as Virgil saith it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

Neither the naked hand nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand.

He that defers his charity ’till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man’s, than of his own.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

Credulity in arts and opinions is likewise of two kinds viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art.

Books are true friends that will never flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself, and you shall need no other comfort.

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

If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the well-being of Church and State.

It’s not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong.

Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

A man’s nature is best perceived in privateness, for there is no affectation; in passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts; and in a new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him.

Wisdom for a man’s self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

A little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back.

The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech… that are the true ends of knowledge…

It is nothing won to admit men with an open door, and to receive them with a shut and reserved countenance.

Divide with reason between self-love and society.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

He that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others’ memory.

Heat is a motion; expansive, restrained, and acting in its strife upon the smaller particles of bodies.

The general root of superstition: namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.

Nothing opens the heart like a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes…and whatever lies upon the heart.

As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

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