Nicolaus Copernicus Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“Moreover, since the sun remains stationary, whatever appears as a motion of the sun is really due rather to the motion of the earth.”

“Near the sun is the center of the universe.”

“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.”