Quote #16

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

More from Francis Bacon

  1. Time, which is the author of authors.
  2. Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi. [The age of antiquity is the youth of the world.] These times are the ancient times, when the world is a…
  3. For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
  4. The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a des…
  5. :death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
  6. The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of thin…
  7. It is true that that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not…
  8. They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

All Francis Bacon quotes