Shoulders Of Giants 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

Sir Isaac Newton famously said that he had achieved everything by standing on the shoulders of giants - the scientific men whose findings he built upon. The same might be said about silicon. After germanium did all the work, silicon became an icon, and germanium was banished to periodic table obscurity. — Sam Kean

If you add your hot passion to the cold attitude of another person, it becomes lukewarm. Don't stand on the toes of dwarfs; stand on the shoulders of giants! — Israelmore Ayivor

Correction of Earlier Entry: 8/01/12
We read over the shoulders of giants; books place us in dialogue not just with an author but with other readers. — Leah Price

If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. SIR ISAAC NEWTON — Jon Kabat-Zinn

It's hopeless," he went on. "We no longer have the learning of the ancients, the age of giants is past!"
"We are dwarfs," William admitted, "but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of those giants, and small though we are, we sometimes manage to see farther on the horizon than they. — Umberto Eco

It's easier to reach for the stars when you stand on the shoulders of giants. — C.J. Peters

Today, we are closer to fulfilling America's promise of economic and social justice because we stand on the shoulders of giants like Dr. King, yet our future progress will depend on how we prepare our next generation of leaders. We must fortify their ladders of opportunity by correcting social injustice, breaking the cycle of poverty in struggling communities, and reinvesting in our schools. Education can unlock a child's potential and remains our strongest weapon against injustice and inequality. — Barack Obama

I stand on the shoulders of giants that have gone before me, in terms of affording people like myself, women, the access to democracy, the vote, medical treatment, education, everything that I've been given. It's all been earned. Therefore I feel it's incumbent on me personally to just contribute something, to add to a collective voice that needs to be here right now, to build it up to a tipping point, to make the world aware that women's rights still have to be addressed and that the word 'feminism' has been devalued and needs to be reclaimed. — Annie Lennox

We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants; thanks to them, we see farther than they. Busying ourselves with the treatises written by the ancients, we take their choice thoughts, buried by age and human neglect, and we raise them, as it were from death to renewed life. -Peter of Blois (d. 1212). — Carter Lindberg

As I go about my work as Premier, I know I stand on the shoulders of giants. — Anna Bligh

F I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton

Newton said, 'If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants.' These days we stand on each other's feet! — Richard Hamming

Nachmanovitch writes, "It's great to sit on the shoulders of giants, but don't let the giants sit on your shoulders. There's no room for their legs to dangle! — Todd Henry

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

You have been blessed to stand on the shoulders of giants. Make sure that someone stands on yours as well. This is the only way of human progress. — Chris Matakas

People say they walk on the shoulders of giants. True, but have you ever walked like one? — Jill Telford

Some say they stand on the shoulders of giants. True. But have they ever tried walking like one? — Jill Telford

The practice of science happens at the border between the known and the unknown. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we peer into the darkness with eyes opened not in fear but in wonder. — Brian Cox

You have ... been told that science grows like an organism. You have been told that, if we today see further than our predecessors, it is only because we stand on their shoulders. But this [Nobel Prize Presentation] is an occasion on which I should prefer to remember, not the giants upon whose shoulders we stood, but the friends with whom we stood arm in arm ... colleagues in so much of my work. — Peter Medawar

This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton's famous phrase. Great breakthroughs are closer to what happens in a flood plain: a dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstructions of the age. — Steven Johnson

We see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. — Hugh Martin

If it seems like you can see farther than most people, it is because you're standing on shoulders of giants. — Gene Stallings

It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets. — Alan Cooper

Peter of Blois, a medieval theologian who died nearly three hundred years before Luther was born, expressed a sense of gratitude for the Christian writers of antiquity which should also characterize our attitude toward the reformers of the sixteenth century: "We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants; thanks to them, we see farther than they. Busying ourselves with the treatises written by the ancients, we take their choice thoughts, buried by age and human neglect, and we raise them, as it were, from death to renewed life. — Timothy George

And because you can stand on the shoulders of giants, you can accomplish something quickly. — Michael Crichton

Computer science increasingly relies on its private corporate patrons who apply their own closed systems of peer review and criticism, with occasional results thrown over the wall. The closed walls of Redmond or Mountain View enable old-fashioned patronage of nature's secrets. The objectivity and scientific status of computer science is a chimera: we cannot stand on the shoulders of giants in computer science, for they simply refuse to let us. — Samir Chopra

We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours. — John Of Salisbury

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. — Isaac Newton

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

With books we stand on the shoulders of giants. — John Locke

I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy. — Peter Greenaway

If I had seen further than others, it's because I stood upon the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton

The family trees of Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer are everywhere so laden with figures of accomplishment that one might expect future generations to be burdened by it all. But the welter of wonderfulness that was their heritage seemed to have been a boon, one that buoyed them up so that each child seems not only to have stood on the shoulders of giants but also to have danced on them. — Eric Metaxas

Scientists do stand on the shoulders of giants, just as do writers. Conversely, in the arts we do make discoveries. We do refine our tools. So I am arguing with, or at least playing with, the idea that art never improves. — Ian McEwan

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton

Genius may stand on the shoulders of giants, but it stands alone. — Tom Robbins