Francis Bacon Quotes

“The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.”
― Clive Barker

“Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils”
― Francis Bacon

“i heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.”
― Bill Hirst

“Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”
― Francis Bacon

“There is a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author without disparaging all others.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes

“All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot be observed without the guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them.”
― Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy

“You always have to go too far to get anywhere at all, in art or life.”
― Francis Bacon (painter)

“But, as Bacon has well pointed out, truth is more likely to come out of error, if this is clear and definite, than out of confusion, and my experience teaches me that it is better to hold a well-understood and intelligible opinion, even if it should turn out to be wrong, than to be content with a muddle-headed mixture of conflicting views, sometimes miscalled impartiality, and often no better than no opinion at all.”
― William Bayliss, Principles Of General Physiology

“...the specious meditations, speculations, and theories of mankind are but a kind of insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it.”
― Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

“The lame (as they say) in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it, and it is clear that the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not in the right direction must increase his aberration.”
― Francis Bacon

“Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“He does not admire the merely contemplative life; like Goethe he scorns knowledge that does not lead to action: "men ought to know that in the theatre of human life it is only for Gods and angels to be spectators.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the mind of all perbutations?”
― Francis Bacon

“Gilbert and George said: “But don’t you see? That’s how Bacon is. He is absolutely right to behave as he wants.” Not as he wants. As he has to behave. An artist must be open to the muse. The greater the artist, the more he is open to “cosmic currents.” He has to behave as he does. If he has “the courage to be an artist,” he is committed to behave as the mood possesses him. “That’s the man who booed Princess Margaret!” —the peasantry shrink back from his sulfurous glow.”
― William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals

“The key question, it seemed to him, was that of whether man was to obey Nature, or attempt to command her. It had been answered long, long ago, claimed Moss; man's very essence lay in the fact that he had elected to command. But to Stenham that seemed a shallow reply. To him wisdom consisted in the conscious and joyous obedience to natural laws, yet when he had said that to Moss, Moss had laughed pityingly. 'My dear man, wisdom is a primitive concept,' he had told him. 'What we want now is knowledge.' Only great disillusionment could make a man say such a thing, Stenham believed.”
― Paul Bowles, The Spider's House

“Perhaps the old saying is true and it is not possible to love and be wise.”
― Josephine Tey, To Love and Be Wise

“{Francis Bacon] was so great a man that I have forgotten his vices.”
― Voltaire, Letters on England

“The great secretary of nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon.”
― Izaak Walton, The life of Rev. George Herbert

“In Bacon we see the culminating prime
Of British intellect and British crime.”
― Ambrose Bierce

“I watched her face. She reminded me of a Francis Bacon painting, fading in and out of her resemblance to anything human, struggling to resist disappearing into an undifferentiated world of pain. I brushed her hair out of her face, made braids again.
ㅤㅤㅤWomen’s bravery, I thought as I worked on her hair from bottom to top, untangling the black mass. I would never be able to go through this. The pain came in waves, in sheets, starting in her belly and extending outward, a flower of pain blooming through her body, a jagged steel lotus.
ㅤㅤㅤI couldn’t stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He’d have had to change his whole philosophy.
ㅤㅤㅤThe mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain. Gasping on the bed, Yvonne bordered on the unrecognizable, disintegrating into a ripe collection of nerves, fibers, sacs, and waters and the ancient clock in the blood. Compared to this eternal body, the individual was a smoke, a cloud. The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am.”
― Janet Fitch

“…he kept saying to himself, I will not sell the Francis Bacon, never the Francis Bacon, absolutely not, I will not sell the Francis Bacon, no I won’t, not the Francis Bacon.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Lime Works

“Francis Bacon has the most delicious last name ever, followed closely by Johnny Scrambledeggs. I golf like those two guys make breakfast out of family reunions.”
― Jarod Kintz, The Lewis and Clark of The Ozarks

“(My copy of Hall's 'Secret Teachings of All Ages' has a really neat picture of Shakespeare with an onionskin engraving of Bacon that you can lay over it to see what Shakespeare would have looked like in a fruity hat. I truly recommend this book.)”
― Kenneth Hite, Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast

“For Your Consideration by Stewart Stafford

Stellar Scrutiny is required,
Taffeta blindfolds though,
Ordinarily obscure.

Three and fifty miles hence,
Wander those in denial,
Of the untrustworthy father in the palace.

Belated guests to the conflagration,
Are served up as fodder,
Consistently denied peerages and proper burial.

Venerated with daggers,
Erstwhile companions stoned,
Ruled And Martyred.

© Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“But he never stopped associating rage with gentleness.”
― Yves Peyre, Francis Bacon ou la mesure de l'excès

“I was akin to Francis Bacon’s ‘Merchant of Light’ collecting experiences in the few days I spent with wonderful people and my dearest. Imbibing everything the mystically beautiful place revealed. I did it every year instead of every twelve years, as professed by Bacon. I brought with me the optimism, energy, compassion, humility, love and aroma of the wood and leaves. Best experiences of my life.”
― Udayakumar D.S., FT Legacy 1: Who is Frank Twine?

“The human understanding, once it has adopted opinions, either because they were already accepted and believed, or because it likes them, draws everything else to support and agree with them. And though it may meet a greater number and weight of contrary instances, it will, with great and harmful prejudice, ignore or exclude them by introducing some distinction, in order that the authority of those earlier assumptions may remain intact and unharmed.
Francis Bacon”
― Gary Taubes, Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals about Diet, Insulin and Successful Treatments

“Behold Good!" is the cry of Hemetes the Heremyte; but not everyone is able to see good. People tend to be blind or to look for other things!”
― Peter Dawkins, The Great Vision: The Judaic-Christian Mysteries / The Vision and Birth of the New Rosicrucianism

“Attempting to scientifically engineer political society with imperfect knowledge is much more dangerous than acknowledging the unknown and irrational elements of human nature.”
― Kimberly Hurd Hale, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis in the Foundation of Modern Political Thought

“Suddenly Joan was terrified. She would fail at this. He would scoff at her and lose interest, and then Sander would also scoff, to stay in Bacon’s good graces, so that Bacon would continue to seek patrons for him. They shared entire worlds she had no entry to, and never would: cabals and social circles Sander was welcomed into because he was the celebrated boy-actor, because he ravished and was ravished by those who granted entry to those circles, because he was ambitious to maintain his elevated status. A month ago she’d have been nervous only for losing the opportunity to study with Francis Bacon but now she feared losing Sander.”
― Nicole galland, Boy