Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban PC KCwas an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author. He served both as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. After his death, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth21 January 1561
church guarantees literature
If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the well-being of Church and State.
self portraiture done
I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.
people looks portraiture
If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.
men accord great-happiness
It is a great happiness when men's professions and their inclinations accord.
struggle illustration events
A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.
funny people devil
People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
law judging construction
Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
men should-have vanity
I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.
work want excitement
As you work, the mood grows on you. There are certain images which suddenly get hold of me and I really want to do them. But it's true to say that the excitement and possibilities are in the working and obviously can only come in the working.
age decay ciphers
He that plots to be the only figure among ciphers [zeros], is the decay of the whole age.
thinking errors understanding
It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives
sacrifice support understanding
The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet it either does not observe them or it despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.
dark arrows coward
Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.
men history mind
Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.