Quote #49

But 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.

More from Francis Bacon

  1. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.
  2. Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only coll…
  3. But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.
  4. No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to…
  5. But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the…
  6. Another argument of hope may be drawn from this - that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it coul…
  7. The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive …
  8. There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and mea…

All Francis Bacon quotes