Nicolaus Copernicus Quotes

Author Image

Nicolaus Copernicus

Profession : Scientist

Birth : February 19, 1473

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.

Nicolaus Copernicus

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Nicolaus Copernicus

For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study.

Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.

Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

For I am not so enamoured of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.

Nicolaus Copernicus

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.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Yet if anyone believes that the earth rotates, surely he will hold that its motion is natural, not violent.

Nicolaus Copernicus

I can easily conceive, most Holy Father, that as soon as some people learn that in this book which I have written concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, I ascribe certain motions to the Earth, they will cry out at once that I and my theory should be rejected.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Mathematics is written for mathematicians.

Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

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.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Near the sun is the center of the universe.

Nicolaus Copernicus

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.

Nicolaus Copernicus