Francis Bacon

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

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.

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

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.

Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories – those that don’t work, those that break down and those that get lost.

The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age.

If I could snap my fingers and do one thing in science, I would get more funding for basic science. But the level of funding that needs to be done is not on the order of millions, like the cost of the Breakthrough Prizes. It’s billions to tens of billions.

It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!

A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms.

Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

Every succeeding scientific discovery makes greater nonsense of old-time conceptions of sovereignty.

If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or sake. Meditation is Drinking it!

If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.