„Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?“

„Tap Life on the shoulders and fall a little more in love.“

—  Rachel Hawthorne American author 1950

Source: Love on the Lifts

„One man stands head and shoulders above his contemporary scholars: head and shoulders, some hold, above the Middle Ages: John Scotus Erigena.“

—  John Scotus Eriugena Irish theologian 810 - 877

Helen Waddell The Wandering Scholars (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1927] 1954) pp. 77-78.
Criticism

„A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.“

—  Thornton Wilder, Our Town

"Mr. Webb"
Our Town (1938)

„What female students might not remember is that the men with whom we stand shoulder-to-shoulder at graduation don't face the same financial challenges.“

—  Sandra Fluke American women's rights activist and lawyer 1981

Fluke, Sandra. (April 17, 2012). "Who says women don't care about wages?" http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/opinion/fluke-equal-pay-for-women/, CNN, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. accessed April 17, 2012.
Articles

„Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.“

—  Tracy Chevalier, book Falling Angels

Source: Falling Angels

„What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pleasant situation.“

—  Terence McKenna American ethnobotanist 1946 - 2000

„I'm standing on the shoulders of Nina Duchess of Hamilton and Miss Lind-af-Hageby and the people who fought for the animals in the previous generation. Their period of life on earth is gone, but people carry on their work. As I said, my husband and I stood on their shoulders, but there are lots who will stand on our shoulders.“

—  Muriel Dowding, Baroness Dowding British noble 1908 - 1993

Source: Interview by Rynn Berry, p. 149

„If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.“

—  Isaac Newton British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics 1643 - 1727

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.
Variant: If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.
Source: The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton

„where is the halo
that should glow 'round your face
and where are the wings that
should grow from your shoulder blades?“

—  Natalie Merchant American singer-songwriter 1963

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), City of Angels

„Wings I saw springing
from fair women's shoulders,
and from beneath rubble
I've seen butterflies flutter.“

—  José Martí Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader 1853 - 1895

I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 273
Simple Verses (1891)

„Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws“

—  Jim Morrison lead singer of The Doors 1943 - 1971

An American Prayer (1978)
Variant: Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth a raven´s claws…

„If we in this movement are going to ask the decent, silent majority of Muslim men - and women - to have the courage to face down the extremist bullies, then we need to have the courage and character to stand shoulder to shoulder with them doing it.“

—  John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan British politician 1947

Speech to the Labour Party conference in Manchester, 28 September 2006. BBC News 28 September 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5388112.stm

„It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.“

—  R. A. Lafferty American writer 1914 - 2002

Atlas, on bearing the burden of maintaining the worlds, in Ch. 4
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.

„And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.“

—  Michel De Montaigne, book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

„The blankets had fallen off and I stared down at her white back, the shoulder blades sticking out as if they wanted to grow into wings, poke through that skin. Little blades. She was helpless.“

—  Charles Bukowski, book Post Office

Source: Post Office

„They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were, when you were an angel," she said. "They say they're where your wings will grow again one day.“

—  David Almond, book Skellig

Source: Skellig

„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)

„If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.“

—  Hal Abelson computer scientist 1947

Abelson attributes this thought to his Princeton roommate Jeff Goll
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

„All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small.“

—  Theodore Roosevelt American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858 - 1919

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind.