Roger Bacon Quotes

#1. The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.

Roger Bacon

#2. The conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages.

Roger Bacon

#3. All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place.

Roger Bacon

#4. For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

Roger Bacon

#5. For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns. His hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.

Roger Bacon

#6. Few have attained to consummate wisdom in the perfection of philosophy: Solomon attained to it, and Aristotle in relation to his times, and in a later age Avicenna , and in our own days the recently deceased Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, and Adam Marsh.

Roger Bacon

#7. Mathematics is the gate and key to science.

Roger Bacon

#8. Argument is conclusive, but it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.

Roger Bacon

#9. There are four great sciences, without which the other sciences cannot be known nor a knowledge of things secured ... Of these sciences the gate and key is mathematics ... He who is ignorant of this [mathematics] cannot know the other sciences nor the affairs of this world.

Roger Bacon

#10. If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics ...

Roger Bacon

#11. To ask the proper question is half of knowing

Roger Bacon

#12. The calendar is intolerable to all wisdom, the horror of all astronomy, and a laughing stock from a mathematician's point of view.

Roger Bacon

#13. Mathematics is absolutely necessary and useful to the other sciences.

Roger Bacon

#14. Neglect of mathematics work injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or things of this world. And what is worst, those who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance, and so do not seek a remedy.

Roger Bacon

#15. All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.

Roger Bacon

#16. A man is crazy who writes a secret in any other way than one which will conceal it from the vulgar.

Roger Bacon

#17. It is not necessarily impossible for human beings to fly, but it so happens that God did not give them the knowledge of how to do it. It follows, therefore, that anyone who claims that he can fly must have sought the aid of the devil. To attempt to fly is therefore sinful.

Roger Bacon

#18. Cease to be ruled by dogmas and authorities; look at the world!

Roger Bacon

#19. It is easier for a man to burn down his own house than to get rid of his prejudices.

Roger Bacon

#20. Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.

Roger Bacon

#21. There are two modes of knowledge: through argument and through experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubts that the mind may rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience.

Roger Bacon

#22. All science requires mathematics.
[Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.]

Roger Bacon

#23. Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

Roger Bacon

#24. Experimental science is the queen of knowledge.

Roger Bacon

#25. There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth ... namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge.

Roger Bacon

#26. Atheists are like wild feral dogs wih no master. But Christians are like loving dogs with a giving and loving master. Domesticated dogs will love you always, but Feral wild dogs HAVE to be put down. they are a danger to us all.

Roger Bacon

#27. Vacuum stands and remains a mathematical space. A cube placed in a vacuum would not displace anything, as it would displace air or water in a space already containing those fluids.

Roger Bacon