Daily Inspiration Quote by Francis Bacon

Bacon writes like a man who has watched the law get seduced by performance. His triads are calibrated to shame the judicial temptations of his age: cleverness, charisma, and swagger. “More learned than witty” isn’t anti-humor so much as anti-theater. Wit is social currency; it wins rooms, not cases. Bacon is warning that a judge who tries to sparkle is already shopping for approval, and approval is the first quiet bribe.

“More reverent than plausible” is the sharper dagger. Plausibility is what a skilled advocate manufactures; it’s the polished story that fits the ear. Reverence, by contrast, implies submission to something larger than the moment: precedent, law’s ritual seriousness, even the moral order that the court pretends to embody. Bacon knows how easy it is for “plausible” to become a euphemism for convenient.

“More advised than confident” targets the ego that judicial office inflames. Confidence reads as authority, but it can also be impatience with complexity, a preference for decisive posture over careful judgment. Bacon is insisting on counsel, consultation, slowness the virtues that look like weakness until you see what haste protects: the judge’s image of certainty.

Then he lands the thesis with Puritan plainness: integrity is not an accessory; it is the job. Coming from Bacon, a statesman later disgraced for corruption, the line carries an extra, almost uncomfortable electricity. It’s not merely idealism; it’s a diagnosis of how institutions rot: not through ignorance, but through the small vanities that make integrity optional.