Francis Bacon

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion.

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

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

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

The remedy is worse than the disease.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

Be humble. It becomes a creature, a depending and borrowed being, that lives not of itself, but breathes in another’s air with another’s breath, and is accountable for every moment of time and can call nothing its own, but is absolutely a tenant at will of the great Lord of heaven and earth.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.