Francis Bacon Quotes on Wisdom & Knowledge (41 Quotes)

The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.

It is by discourse that men associate and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations, wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.

But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

Knowledge is power.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

The wisdom of the ancients.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

It is impossible to love and be wise.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry A young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom.

Knowledge itself is power. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.

History makes people wise.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall But in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it.

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.

This delivering of knowledge in distinct and disjointed aphorisms doth leave the wit of man more free to turn and toss, and to make use of that which is so delivered to more several purposes and applications

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, 'Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.'

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

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 the middle course it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy (science) 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 up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never been made), much may be hoped.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

Knowledge is a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Studies teach not their own use that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding that it can hold men's hearts by hopes when it cannot by satisfaction

The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning, it far surpasseth all other in nature

For knowledge itself is power.

Cunning is a sinister or crooked wisdom.

Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.

For knowledge, too, is itself power.

There are three parts in truth first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it.

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.