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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

Knowledge

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

Earth

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

Certainty

Earth

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

Heaven

Stars

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

Earth

Rest

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

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.

Therefore, in the course of the work I have followed this plan: I describe in the first book all the positions of the orbits together with the movements which I ascribe to the Earth, in order that this book might contain, as it were, the general scheme of the universe.

Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Opportunity

Earth

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

Earth

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.

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

Direction

Earth

So, influenced by these advisors and this hope, I have at length allowed my friends to publish the work, as they had long besought me to do.

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.

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

Nicolaus Copernicus

Earth

Ocean