John of Salisbury Quotes on Knowledge

Quotes

• Attributed to John of Salisbury:

  “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.”

• Attributed to John of Salisbury:

  “Words without learning are mere noise.”

• Attributed to John of Salisbury:

  “The school of life is wider than any university.”

• “Est ergo tyranni et principis hæc differentia sola, quod hic legi obtemperat, et ejus arbitrio populum regit, cujus se credit ministrum.”

  Between a tyrant and a prince there is this single or chief difference, that the latter obeys the law and rules the people by its dictates, accounting himself as but their servant. Bk. 4, ch. 1

• “Exquisita lectio singulorum, doctissimum; cauta electio meliorum, optimum facit.”

  Accurate reading on a wide range of subjects makes the scholar; careful selection of the better makes the saint . Bk. 7, ch. 10

• “Accurate reading on a wide range of subjects makes the scholar; careful selection of the better makes the saint . Bk. 7, ch. 10”

  Exquisita lectio singulorum, doctissimum; cauta electio meliorum, optimum facit.

• “Et pro virtutum habitu quilibet et liber est, et, quatenus est liber, eatenus virtutibus pollet.”

  A man is free in proportion to the measure of his virtues , and the extent to which he is free determines what his virtues can accomplish. Bk. 7, ch. 25

• “Lex donum Dei est, æquitatis forma, norma justitiæ, divinæ voluntatis imago, salutis custodia, unio et consolidatio populorum, regula officiorum, exclusio et exterminatio vitiorum, violentiæ et totius injuriæ pœna.”

  Law is the gift of God, the model of equity, a standard of justice, a likeness of the divine will, the guardian of well-being, a bond of union and solidarity between peoples, a rule defining duties, a barrier against the vices and the destroyer thereof, a punishment of violence and all wrongdoing. Bk. 8, ch. 17

• “Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum 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”

  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. Metalogicon (1159) bk. 3, ch. 4. Translation from Henry Osborn Taylor The Mediaeval Mind ( 1919) vol. 2, p. 159; such similes were available to

• “To say that a thing "wholly pertains" to something else, or "does not pertain to it in any way," and that something "is predicated in a universal way" of something else, or "is completely alien to it" amount to the same thing. Nevertheless, while one form of expression is [now] in frequent use, the other has become practically obsolete, except so far as it may occasionally be admitted through mutual agreement. In Aristotle's day it was perhaps customary to use both of these forms of expression, but now one has replaced the other [simply] because usage has so decreed.”

  p. 168