If There Be Some Who, Though Ignorant

To Know The Mighty Works Of God, To Comprehend His Wisdom And Majesty And Power; To Appreciate, In Degree, The Wonderful Workings Of His Laws, Surely All This Must Be A Pleasing And Acceptable Mode Of Worship To The Most High, To Whom Ignorance Cannot Be More Grateful Than Knowledge.

If There Should Chance To Be Any Mathematicians Who, Ignorant In Mathematics Yet Pretending To Skill In That Science, Should Dare, Upon The Authority Of Some Passage Of Scripture Wrested To Their Purpose, To Condemn And Censure My Hypothesis, I Value Them Not, And Scorn Their Inconsiderate Judgement. De Revolutionibus Coelestibus

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.

In The Center Of All Rests The Sun. For Who Would Place This Lamp Of A Very Beautiful Temple In Another Or Better Place That This Wherefrom It Can Illuminate Everything At The Same Time? As A Matter Of Fact, Not Unhappily Do Some Call It The Lantern; Others, The Mind And Still Others, The Pilot Of The World. Trismegistus Calls It A "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that Which Gazes Upon All Things." And So The Sun, As If Resting On A Kingly Throne, Governs The Family Of Stars Which Wheel Around.

Therefore, Having Obtained The Opportunity From These Sources, I Too Began To Consider The Mobility Of The Earth.