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 perfe… - Nicolaus Copernicus

Nor do I doubt that skilled and scholarly mathematicians will agree with me if, what philosophy requires from the beginning, they will examine and judge, not casually but deeply, what I have gathered together in this book to prove these things. ...Mathematics is written for mathematicians, to whom these my labours, if I am not mistaken, will appear to contribute something. ...What... I may have achieved in this, I leave to the decision of your Holiness especially, and to all other learned mathematicians. ...If perchance there should be foolish speakers who, together with those ignorant of all mathematics, will take it upon themselves to decide concerning these things, and because of some place in the Scriptures wickedly distorted to their purpose, should dare to assail this my work, they are of no importance to me, to such an extent do I despise their judgment as rash.

Why therefore should we hesitate any longer to grant to it the movement which accords naturally with its firm, rather than put the whole world in a commotion — the world whose limits we do not and cannot know? And why not admit that the appearance of daily revolution belongs to the heavens but the reality belongs to the Earth? And things are as when Aeneas said in Virgil: “ We sail out of the harbor, and the land and the cities move away.” Page 23

For when a ship is floating calmly along, the sailors see its motion mirrored in everything outside, while on the other hand they suppose that they are stationary, together with everything on board. In the same way, the motion of the earth can unquestionably produce the impression that the entire universe is rotating.