All the crimes on earth do not destroy so many of the human race nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.

I would by all means have men beware, lest Æsop's pretty fable of the fly that sate [sic] on the pole of a chariot at the Olympic races and said, 'What a dust do I raise,' be verified in them. For so it is that some small observation, and that disturbed sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by the eye, sometimes by the calculation, and which may be owing to some real change in the heaven, raises new heavens and new spheres and circles.

Again there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress; which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

There is no doubt but men of genius and leisure may carry our method to greater perfection, but, having had long experience, we have found none equal to it for the commodiousness it affords in working with the Understanding.

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.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

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