Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. – Francis Bacon
In thinking, if a person begins with certainties, they shall end in doubts, but if they can begin with doubts, they will end in certainties. – Francis Bacon
It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a mans self. – Francis Bacon
Piety and corruption go together like hot dogs and mustard. They have to. No one can fulfill the demands of piety; as a daily demand, it is inhuman. So it inspires the opposite—just for the sheer health of the body, if not the soul. – Norman Mailer, “Primitive Man, Art and Science, Evil and Judgment,” The Spooky A