1. 事实上我们全都是些集体性人物，不管我们愿意把自己摆在什么位置，严格地说，可以看成我们所特有的东西是微乎其微的，就像我们个人是微乎其微的一样。我们全都要从前辈或同辈那里学习到一些东西，就连最大的天才，如果单凭他所具有的内在的自我去对付一切，他也决不会有多大成就。我们的发展要归功于广大世界千丝万缕的影响，从这些影响中，我们吸收我们能吸收的和对我们有用的那一部分。（歌德）
But, in fact, we are all collective beings, let us place ourselves as we may. For how little have we, and are we, that we can strictly call our own property? We must all receive and learn both from those who were before us, and from those wo are with us. Even the greatest genius would not go far if he tried to own everything to his own internal self.
I by no means owe my works to my own wisdom alone, but to a thousand things and persons around me, who provided me with material. There were fools and sages, minds enlightened and narrow, childhood, youth, and mature age - all told me what they felt, what they thought, how they lived and worked, and what experiences they had gained; and I had nothing further to do than to put out my hand and reap what others had sown for me.
--- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's Works
2. 任何个人要想突然做出惊人的发现 ，这是不符合事物发展的规律的 。科学是一步一个脚印地向前发展 ，每个人都要依赖前人的工作 。当你听说一个突然的 ，意想不到的发现 ——仿佛晴天霹雳时 ，你永远可以确信 ，它总是由一个人对另一个人的影响所导致的 ，正是因为有这种相互影响才使科学的进展存在着巨大的可能性 。科学并不依赖于某一个人的思想 ，而是依赖于千万人的集体智慧 ，千万人思考着同一个问题 ，每一个人尽他自己的一份力量 ，知识的大厦就是这样建造起来的 。（卢瑟福）
It is not in the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden violent discovery; science goes step by step, and every man depends on the work of his predecessors. When you hear of a sudden unexpected discovery—a bolt from the blue, as it were—you can always be sure that it has grown up by the influence of one man on another, and it is this mutual influence which makes the enormous possibility of scientific advance. Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem, and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is gradually being erected. --- Ernest Rutherford
3. 我曾经为知识领域添瓦加砖，也曾帮别人添枝加叶；这些东西的价值，比起身后留下某种纪念物的大数学家或任何其他大大小小的艺术家们创造的价值，只是程度上有所不同，性质上并无差异。(The case for my life, then, or for that of any one else who has been a mathematician in the same sense which I have been one, is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any of the other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them. -- A Mathematician's Apology, G. H. Hardy)
