Fredrik > Fredrik's Quotes

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“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.”
― Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon IV: The Advancement of Learning

“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake...”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“Money is a great servant but a bad master.”
― Francis Bacon

“Ipsa scientia potestas est.

Knowledge itself is power.”
― Francis Bacon, Meditations Sacrae and Human Philosophy

“Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”
― Francis Bacon

“There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.”
― Francis Bacon

“Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.”
― Francis Bacon

“There Are But Two Tragedies in Life-One is One's Inability to attain One's Heart's Desire-The Other Is To Have It!”
― Francis Bacon

“Parents who wish to train up their children in the way they should go must go in the way in which they would have their children go.”
― Bacon

“For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble.”
― Francis Bacon

“To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.”
― Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

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

“Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested.”
― Francis Bacon

“People of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon and seldom drive business home to it's conclusion, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.”
― Francis Bacon

“A false friend is more dangerous than an open enemy”
― Francis Bacon

“Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books."

[Proposition touching Amendment of Laws]”
― Francis Bacon

“I wonder why it is that the countries with the most nobles also have the most misery?”
― Francis Bacon

“If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.”
― Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

“The monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?”
― Francis Bacon

“For better it is to make a beginning of that which may lead to something, than to engage in a perpetual struggle and pursuit in courses which have no exit.”
― Francis Bacon, Complete Works of Francis Bacon

“So if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.  And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. ”
― Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.”
― Francis Bacon, The New Organon

“But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had—power.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

“Anyone who seeks to help others—whether by means of religion or by means of medicine—must eschew the use of force.”
― Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
― Andre Gide