Date: c. 1603

"But do you suppose, when all the approaches and entrances to men's minds are beset and blocked by the most obscure idols -- idols deeply implanted and, as it were, burned in -- that any clean and polished surface remains in the mirror of the mind on which the genuine natural light of things can ...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1605

"This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the c...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1605, 1640

"Let us now pass on to the judicial place or palace of the mind, which we are to approach and view with more reverence and attention."

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1620

"For the studies of men in these places are confined and as it were imprisoned in the writings of certain authors, from whom if any man dissent he is straightway arraigned as a turbulent person and an innovator."

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1620

"For whereas in this first book of aphorisms I proposed to prepare men's minds as well for understanding as for receiving what is to follow; now that I have purged and swept and levelled the floor of the mind, it remains that I place the mind in a good position and as it were in a favourable aspe...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)