The human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.

The partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch not in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs.

[Science is] the labor and handicraft of the mind.

You want accuracy, but not representation. If you know how to make the figuration, it doesn't work. Anything you can make, you make by accident. In painting, you have to know what you do, not how, when you do it.

The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists.

Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high.

Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.