Bernard Chartres Quotes & Sayings

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
- From a letter to Robert Hooke dated February 5th, 1676.
The metaphor was first recorded in 1159 by John of Salisbury and attributed to Bernard of Chartres:
Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvenimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea. — Isaac Newton

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they. — Bernard Of Chartres

We are like dwarfs [the moderns] sitting on the shoulders of giants [the ancients]. Our glance can thus take in more things and reach farther than theirs. It is not because our sight is sharper nor our height greater than theirs; it is that we are carried and elevated by the high stature of the giants. — Bernard Of Chartres