The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
Francis BaconI should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.
Francis BaconIt's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.
Francis BaconMen are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.
Francis BaconThe human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.
Francis BaconAnother error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; 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.
Francis Bacon