On the shoulders of giants

12th-century, Bernard of Chartres (d. c. 1130), as quoted by John of Salisbury (c. 1115-1180):

"Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to [puny] dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants.  He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature." 

Metalogicon (1159) III.4 (PL 199, 900C), trans. Daniel D. McGarry (The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury:  a twelfth-century defense of the verbal and logical arts of the trivium, trans. Daniel D. McGarry (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1955), 167).

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. 

Joannis Saresberiensis postea episcopi Carnotensis opera omnia, ed. J. A. Giles (1848), vol. 5, p. 131.  The reading on p. 136 of Ioannis Saresberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Metalogicon libri IIII, ed. Clemens C. I. Webb (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1929) differs only in lacking some (though not all) of the commas inserted by Giles, and in substituting u for some vs: 

Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora uidere, non utique proprii uisus acumine aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subuehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.  

'Et,' ut ait philosophus, 'nos sumus quasi nani stantes super humeros gigantum.' 

Var. in MSS A and B, according to Giles (Webb gives no variants): 

'Et,' ut ait philosophus, 'nos sumus quasi nani stantes super humeros gigantium.' 

Alexander Neckam (Nequam, 1157-1217), De naturis rerum 78 (Alexandri Neckam De naturis rerum libri duo.  With the poem of the same author, De laudibus divinæ sapientiæ, ed. Thomas Wright (London:  Longman, Green, Longman, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863), 123).