Francis Bacon Quotes

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.

Science only means knowledge; and for [Greek] ancients it did only mean knowledge. Thus the favorite science of the Greeks was Astronomy, because it was as abstract as Algebra. ... We may say that the great Greek ideal was to have no use for useful things. The Slave was he who learned useful things; the Freeman was he who learned useless things. This still remains the ideal of many noble men of science, in the sense they do desire truth as the great Greeks desired it; and their attitude is an external protest against vulgarity of utilitarianism.

Only an educated and informed people will be a free people.

Young cat! If you keep Your eyes open enough, Oh, the stuff you will learn! The most wonderful stuff!

Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling.

Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

The difference between a learned man and an ignorant one is the same as that between a living man and a corpse.

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.

What you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.

Books are the carriers of civilization... Books are humanity in print.

My most prized possession was my library card from the Oakland Public Library.

The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.

It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government.

The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it.

nothing decorates a home like books. There they are, waiting to decorate the mind, too!

The poor need jobs and money, not psychoanalysis. The uneducated need knowledge and skills, not psychoanalysis.

For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society.

What education is to the individual, revelation is to the whole human race.

Brain so good could've sworn you went to college

I've found that no one complains about pop culture being a source of someone lecturing to them. If someone's telling you about Kim Kardashian, you're not going to accuse them of lecturing to you. If I can explore an intersection between pop culture and science literacy, then it generally will not come across as a lecture.

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.

That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.