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For indeed it is one of the lessons of the history of science that each age steps on the shoulders of the ages which have gone before. The value of each age is not its own, but is in part, in large part, a debt to its forerunners. And this age of ours, if, like its predecessors, it can boast of something of which it is proud, would, could it read the future, doubtless find much also of which it would be ashamed.

— Michael Foster

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Notes from Wikiquote

Compare: Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676), "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants."

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Science

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Foster (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.