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 apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

We must see whether the same clock with weights will go faster at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; it is probable, if the pull of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine, that the earth has real attraction.

Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are are only good intellectual tools.

Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.

A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint.

The errors of young men are the ruin of business, but the errors of aged men amount to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.

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