Quote#God & Faith
You rejoice in having made a convert to Atheism. I think there is…
Quote byWilliam Godwin · 1756–1836
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter to H. B. Rosser (7 March 1820), quoted in C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, Vol. II (1876), p. 263.
English (original)
You rejoice in having made a convert to Atheism. I think there is something unnatural in a zeal of proselytism in an Atheist. I do not believe in an intellectual God, a God made after the image of man. In the vulgar acceptation of the word, therefore, I think a man is right who does not believe in God, but I am also persuaded that a man is wrong who is without religion.
— William Godwin
More from William Godwin
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.
I took some pains to convince you that the Whigs, as a party in the state, were of the highest value to the public welfare, and constituted the party to which a liberal-minded and enlightened man would adhere.
Truth is powerful, and, if not instantly, at least by slow degrees, may make good her possession. Gleams of good sense may penetrate through the thickest clouds of error.
It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient.
Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the …
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.