The New Organon (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

by Francis Bacon

this very question — viz., whether or not anything can be known — was to be settled not by arguing, but by trying.

There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.

if the multitude assent and applaud, men ought immediately to examine themselves as to what blunder or fault they may have committed.

it would be disgraceful if, while the regions of the material globe — that is, of the earth, of the sea, and of the stars — have been in our times laid widely open and revealed, the intellectual globe should remain shut up within the narrow limits of old discoveries.

by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this — that men despair and think things impossible.

And a like judgment I suppose may be passed on myself in future ages: that I did no great things, but simply made less account of things that were accounted great.

Now experiments of this kind have one admirable property and condition: they never miss or fail. For since they are applied, not for the purpose of producing any particular effect, but only of discovering the natural cause of some effect, they answer the end equally well whichever way they turn out; for they settle the question.

For there is no comparison between that which we may lose by not trying and by not succeeding, since by not trying we throw away the chance of an immense good; by not succeeding we only incur the loss of a little human labor.

And better surely it is that we should know all we need to know, and yet think our knowledge imperfect, than that we should think our knowledge perfect, and yet not know anything we need to know.

For there is nothing more true in nature than the twin propositions that "nothing is produced from nothing," and "nothing is reduced to nothing," but that the absolute quantum or sum total of matter remains unchanged, without increase or diminution.

And as in matters solid and true I aspire to the ultimate and supreme, so do I forever hate all things vain and tumid, and do my best to discard them.