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Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon


Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban KC, son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne (Cooke) Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific revolution. Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St Alban in 1621.

There are some scholars who believe that Bacon's vision for a Utopian New World in North America was laid out in his novel The New Atlantis, which depicts a mythical island, Bensalem, in the Pacific Ocean west of Peru. He envisioned a land where there would be greater rights for women, the abolishing of slavery, elimination of debtors' prisons, separation of church and state, and freedom of religious and political expression. Francis Bacon played a leading role in creating the British colonies, especially in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Newfoundland.

Thomas Jefferson considered Francis Bacon to be one of the three greatest men who ever lived, "Bacon, Locke and Newton" were "the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception." Francis Bacon's influence can also be seen on a variety of religious and spiritual authors, and on groups that have utilized his writings in their own belief systems.
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For as love is oftentimes won with beauty, so it is not kept, preserved, and continued, but by virtue and obedience.
topics: beauty , love , vanity  
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...you are bound to bear yourself as agreeably as you can towards those whom nature or chance or your own choice has made the companions of your life.
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Ví dụ như người Utopia không thể hiểu được tại sao lại có người mê mẩn được vẻ óng ánh buồn thảm của một hòn đá bé xíu trong khi họ có toàn bộ sao sáng trên trời để chiêm ngưỡng - hoặc làm sao lại có người ngu ngốc đến nỗi tưởng mình hơn người khác chỉ vì mặc quần áo dệt bằng sợi len mịn và nhỏ hơn người ta. Nói cho cùng thì len là quần áo của cừu và không thể làm cho ai thành cái gì hơn cừu được.
topics: thomas-more , utopia  
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Either it's a bad thing to enjoy life, in other words, to experience pleasure - in which case you shouldn't help anyone to do it, but should try to save the whole human race from such a frightful fate - or else, if it's good for other people, and you're not only allowed, but positively obliged to make it possible for them, why shouldn't charity begin at home?
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and, indeed, nature has so made us, that we all love to be flattered and to please ourselves with our own notions
topics: ego , human-nature  
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The same trade generally passes down from father to son, inclinations often following descent: but if any man’s genius lies another way he is, by adoption, translated into a family that deals in the trade to which he is inclined;
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It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness of a philosopher’s meddling with government.  ‘If a man,’ says he, ‘were to see a great company run out every day into the rain and take delight in being wet—if he knew that it would be to no purpose for him to go and persuade them to return to their houses in order to avoid the storm, and that all that could be expected by his going to speak to them would be that he himself should be as wet as they, it would be best for him to keep within doors, and, since he had not influence enough to correct other people’s folly, to take care to preserve himself.’ “Though,
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It was evidently quite obvious to a powerful intellect like his that the one essential condition for a healthy society was equal distribution of goods - which I suspect is impossible under capitalism. For, when everyone's entitled to get as much for himself as he can, all available property, however much there is of it, is bound to fall into the hands of a small minority, which means that everyone else is poor.
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Thus old men are honoured with a particular respect, yet all the rest fare as well as they.  Both dinner and supper are begun with some lecture of morality that is read to them; but it is so short that it is not tedious nor uneasy to them to hear it. 
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Son tan diferentes los paladares de los mortales, tan torpes las inteligencias de algunos, tan ingratos los ánimos, tan absurdos los juicios, que les son más simpáticos los que se conceden una vida alegre y suelta que los que se molestan con preocupaciones y con el estudio de algo que pueda servir de provecho y placer para los ingratos y los maledicentes. La mayor parte no conoce las letras, y muchos las rechazan. El bárbaro repele lo que no es perfectamente bárbaro.
topics: utopia  
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There is a great number of noblemen among you that are themselves as idle as drones, that subsist on other men's labour, on the labour of their tenants, whom, to raise their revenues, they pare to the quick.
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the way to heaven was the same from all places, and he that had no grave had the heavens still over him. 
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Isn't this conception of absolute justice absolutely unjust?
topics: justice  
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There's nothing majestic about ruling a nation of beggars--true majesty consists in governing the rich and prosperous. That's what that admirable character Fabricius meant when he said he'd rather govern rich men than be one. Certainly a man who enjoys a life of luxury while everyone else is moaning and groaning around him can hardly be called a king--he is more like a gaoler.
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if the natives refuse to conform themselves to their laws they drive them out of those bounds which they mark out for themselves, and use force if they resist, for they account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence. 
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adorned
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It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best. So both the raven and the ape think their own young ones fairest.
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he sometimes took pleasure to try the force of those that came as suitors to him upon business by speaking sharply, though decently, to them, and by that he discovered their spirit and presence of mind; with which he was much delighted when it did not grow up to impudence, as bearing a great resemblance to his own temper, and he looked on such persons as the fittest men for affairs. 
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I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.
topics: death  
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Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property, which like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might best be served, and what service was myself best fitted by nature to perform.
topics: inspirational  
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