A Quote by Bernard of Chartres

We [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter.

Bernard of Chartres

Quote Topics

Able Dwarves Farther Giants Latter Like More Perched See Shoulders Than Thus

Quote Author

Bernard of Chartres
French - Philosopher

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

It has been observed that a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will see farther than the giant himself; and the moderns, standing as they do on the vantage ground of former discoveries and uniting all the fruits of the experience of their forefathers, with their own actual observation, may be admitted to enjoy a more enlarged and comprehensive view of things than the ancients themselves.

Charles Caleb Colton

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

Gene Stallings

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

Bernard of Chartres

Aquinas is worth reading. He has stood the test of time. And even where he errs, you can learn more from the errors of a great mind than you can learn from the truths of a small mind. You can see a whole lot farther standing on the shoulders of giants.

Norman Geisler

The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.

Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

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

A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.

Robert Burton

Dragons, to my way of thinking, are just another 'race' of sapient characters. We see lots of elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, giants and, of course, dragons.