FRANCIS BACON

--A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

--A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy
bringeth men's minds about to religion.
--A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
--A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
--Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
--For also knowledge itself is power.
--If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
--It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.
--It is impossible to love and to be wise. (Russell)
--Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
--Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digest
--Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
--People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their
learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
--Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but
to weigh and consider.
--Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed,
or crushed.
--I have taken all knowledge to be my province.
--Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom///--Silence is the virtue of fools.
--The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of
knowledge caused men to fall.
--Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural
philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
--Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact
man.
--There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself
the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally
the greatest fool.
--Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

BERTRAND RUSSEL
--Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
-- One of the most powerful sources of false belief is envy.
--Pride of a race is even more harmful than national pride.
-- To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.
-- As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon
authority, there is no end to our troubles.
-- Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
-- I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
-- If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their
own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could
have paradise in a few years
-- In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often
the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of
those is the more annoying.
-- No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
-- The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not
merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and
relations of friendship or affection.
-- The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other,
that you can boast about it.
-- Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in
rationality.
-- Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true
happiness. (Bacon)
-- Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he
was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by
examining his wives' mouths. Impact of Science on Society
-- We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but
do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.
-- The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem
worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will
believe it.
-- Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of
cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
-- Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of
good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones

GULLIVER’S TRAVEL
--I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race
of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the
earth." (Part II)
--there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have
not maintained for truth." (Part III)
-- as to those filthy Yahoos, although there were few greater lovers of mankind,
at that time, than myself, yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so
detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them, the more hateful
they grew, while I stayed in that country." (Part IV)
--I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not
ashamed.