Francis Bacon Quotes

No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.

'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.

I didn't want to write another book about fraudulence.

I am myself a fabulous fake.

What I am is a heretic who's recanted and, thereby, in everyone's eyes, saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.

For a long time, I felt that was actually the best I could ever hope for - to pretend to be a good person - because I was quite the opposite.

Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.

You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.

The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?

There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.

Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.

Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.

Hypocrisy is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness.

A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.

I knew how good love could be -- I knew it was the best thing I'd ever done in my life -- and yet here I was alone. I was taking chances with my life. I kept telling everybody that I was all right, but I wasn't.

men are so conceited they’ll believe anything that flatters them

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

I turned myself to face me, but I've never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker.

I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.

Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.

You feel like telling him you're not single in the way that he thinks you're single. After all, you have yourself.