Quotes from "The Notebooks of Leonardo De Vinci" paraphrased into modern American English:
"And those men who are inventors and interpreters between Nature and Man, as compared with boasters and declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as an object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. For the first is something in itself - - and the other, nothingness."
"Folks little indebted to nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form . . . and without it I might class them with the herds of beasts."
"And those who make their living by presenting Natural systems to people, as compared with the promoters and attackers of these same systems, must be regarded and yet not listened to. Treat them as the false images that they represent."
