When a man, after long years of searching, chances on a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not, therefore, be personally celebrated.

He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding.

In science, moreover, the work of the individual is so bound up with that of his scientific predecessors and contemporaries that it appears almost as an impersonal product of his generation.

From the story “The Progress of Science” in The Scientific Monthly edited by J. McKeen Cattell (June 1921), Vol. XII, No. 6.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein