Francis Bacon on pragmatism
The roads to human power and to human knowledge lie close together, and are nearly the same; nevertheless, on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling on abstractions, it is safer to begin and raise the sciences from those foundations which have relation to practice and let the active part be as the seal which prints and determines the contemplative counterpart.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Novum_Organum/Book_II_(Spedding)
quote francis bacon pragmatism