Francis Bacon

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est (Knowledge Itself Is Power)

People of great position are servants times three, servants of their country, servants of fame, and servants of business.

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

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

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

Logic is like the sword

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is, usually, deeper and more beautiful than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

A private Life is to be preferred; the Honor and Gain of publick Posts, bearing no proportion with the Comfort of it

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

The advantage of doing one’s praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.