Francis Bacon Quotes

The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

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.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

We do not know a truth without knowing its cause.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Philosophy is an attempt by man to find cause and effect. Religion has the same goal.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Happy is he who can trace effects to their causes.

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'

Metaphysics is a science.

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

The true knowledge of good and evil arouses disturbances of the mind

Happy is the one who knows the causes of things.

The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.

The things best to know are first principles and causes, but these things are perhaps the most difficult for men to grasp, for they are farthest removed from the senses.

To live is nothing more than to come here to die, to be what we were before being born, but with apprenticeship, experience, knowledge of cause, and perhaps with will.

We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.

To know truly is to know by causes.

For that which is without a beginning, a final cause need not be sought.

Truth lies in a small compass! The Aristotelians say, all truth is contained in Aristotle, in one place or another. Galileo makes Simplicius say so, but shows the absurdity of that speech by answering all truth is contained in a lesser compass, namely, in the alphabet.