Francis Bacon Quotes

What's more valuable - intelligence or consciousness?

The only thing about a man that is a man is his mind.

But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know.

Mind is memory, not intelligence.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

Knowledge is the life of the mind.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend

If you will give the matter a moment's thought, you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind.

It's one thing thinking something and another thing knowing it.

There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.

To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive; having ideas and perception being the same thing.

In all the universe there is nothing more precious than mind.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

Knowledge is porportionate to being... You know in virtue of what you are.

I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.

We use concepts like "consciousness"---"mind"---"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.

We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of anoyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.

Our erected wit maketh us to know what perfection is.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

The mind is the root from which all things grow if you can understand the mind, everything else is included.

Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.