Top 17 Nicolaus Copernicus Quotes

Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe.

We regard it as a certainty that the earth, enclosed between poles, is bounded by a spherical surface.

The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.

For a traveler going from any place toward the north, that pole of the daily rotation gradually climbs higher, while the opposite pole drops down an equal amount.

Pouring forth its seas everywhere, then, the ocean envelops the earth and fills its deeper chasms.

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

Of all things visible, the highest is the heaven of the fixed stars.

The earth also is spherical, since it presses upon its center from every direction.

I am aware that a philosopher‘s ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.

Although all the good arts serve to draw man‘s mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure.

So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.

I shall now recall to mind that the motion of the heavenly bodies is circular, since the motion appropriate to a sphere is rotation in a circle.

In so many and such important ways, then, do the planets bear witness to the earth’s mobility.

Therefore I would not have it unknown to Your Holiness, the the only thing which induced me to look for another way of reckoning the movements of the heavenly bodies was that I knew that mathematicians by no means agree in their investigation thereof.

Not a few other very eminent and scholarly men made the same request, urging that I should no longer through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of students of Mathematics.

At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun.

Mathematics is written for mathematicians.