I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

In mathematics I can report no deficiency, except it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of Pure Mathematics.

Moreover, the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.

There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom.

Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.