Francis Bacon

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking.

Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.