Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [dated as 5 February 1675 using the Julian calendar with March 25th rather than January 1st as New Years Day, equivalent to 15 February 1676 by Gregorian reckonings.] A facsimile of the original is online at The digital Library https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792. The quotation is 7-8 lines up from the bottom of the first page. The phrase is most famous as an expression of Newton's but he was using a metaphor which in its earliest known form was attributed to Bernard of Chartres by John of Salisbury: Bernard of Chartres used to say that 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. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants. Modernized variants: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. <br class="br">Variant: If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants. <br class="br">Source: The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton
“If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.”
Hal Abelson (1947) computer scientist
Abelson attributes this thought to his Princeton roommate Jeff Goll <br class="br">Source: Public Knowledge - Hal Abelson http://www.publicknowledge.org/about/who/board/abelson; also quoted in Vortex dynamics in thin films of amorphous Mo77Ge23, 1998, p. 6
Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader
“Genius may stand on the shoulders of giants, but it stands alone.”
Tom Robbins (1932) American writer
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
“If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.”
Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019) American physicist
As quoted in "Wilson vs Watson: The blessing of great enemies" by Amanda Gefter in New Scientist (10 September 2009) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17771-wilson-vs-watson-the-blessing-of-great-enemies.html; this is a play upon the famous statement by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."
“I may be small, but I screw up big because I'm standing on the shoulders of GIANTS.”
Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga
This evokes the statement by Newton: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Vorkosigan Saga, The Vor Game (1990)
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
“The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giant's shoulders to mount on.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
The Friend; A Series of Essays (1812), No. 15 (30 November 1809), p. 228
Cf. Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676): "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants".
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
"Newton's Principia" in 300 Years of Gravitation. (1987) by S. W. Hawking and W. Israel, p. 4
“Bernard of Chartres used to say that we were like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants. If we see more and further than they, it is not due to our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high and upborne by their gigantic bigness.”
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 subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea
John of Salisbury book Metalogicon
Metalogicon (1159) bk. 3, ch. 4. Translation from Henry Osborn Taylor The Mediaeval Mind ([1911] 1919) vol. 2, p. 159; such similes were available to Isaac Newton, when he humbly made use of them in comparing his progress in scientific ideas to those whose ideas he drew upon, in his famous statement to Robert Hooke in a letter of 15 February 1676: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project
Why Software Should Be Free (1991) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html <br class="br">1990s
