73 Quotes by Nicolaus Copernicus

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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