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Who really said it

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use

Written by Galileo Galilei 1564–1642 · Italian astronomer and natural philosopher
Verified In copyright

The sentence is genuinely Galileo’s, from his 1615 Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina — the 1615 Italian is on record in the Edizione Nazionale of his Opere, vol. V ↗. The English everyone quotes is Stillman Drake’s 1957 translation with two small changes: Drake wrote “that that same God … has intended to forgo their use,” not “intended us to forgo.”

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use” Galileo Galilei, "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina" (1615), in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Stillman Drake (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957), 183. Drake's published text reads "that that same God … has intended to forgo their use"; the popular version inserts "us." Verified via quotle.info. · Verbatim: “But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Stillman Drake (translation), published by Anchor Books / Doubleday — now Knopf Doubleday, Penguin Random House). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Work
Lettera a madama Cristina di Lorena — Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
Written
1615; circulated in manuscript, first printed at Strasbourg in 1636
Translation
Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Doubleday Anchor, 1957), p. 183
Popular wording
Drifted — Drake has “that same God … intended to forgo”; the circulating text has “the same God … intended us to forgo”

But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. Drake, 1957 — as published

Galileo’s Italian, in the Edizione Nazionale: “Ma che quell’istesso Dio che ci ha dotati di sensi, di discorso e d’intelletto, abbia voluto, posponendo l’uso di questi, darci con altro mezo le notizie che per quelli possiamo conseguire … non credo che sia necessario il crederlo.” The sentence immediately following in Drake presses the point: God would not require us to deny sense and reason about physical matters set before our own eyes.

Original Italian, 1615
Read the passage in Galileo’s Italian
Read the full 1957 Drake translation at the Internet Archive

How the sentence reached English

  • 1615 — Galileo writes the letter to Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, expanding an earlier letter to Benedetto Castelli. It circulates in manuscript only ↗ — the Inquisition investigation opens the same year.
  • 1636 — The letter is finally printed, at Strasbourg, in Italian and Latin, and is then suppressed in Catholic jurisdictions ↗. Drake’s appendix identifies that Strasbourg edition, Nova-antiqua sanctissimorum patrum… doctrina, as the first published edition of the letter.
  • 1661 — Thomas Salusbury’s London volume carries the first English translations of Galileo’s works ↗, this letter among them, as The Ancient and Modern Doctrine of Holy Fathers.
  • 1957 — Stillman Drake publishes the modern English version everyone now quotes. His preface states that his translation of the letter is “based upon earlier English versions cited in the appendix, corrected and modernized” against the Italian — readable in full at the Internet Archive ↗.
In copyright

Galileo’s 1615 Italian is long in the public domain. The English sentence is not: it is Stillman Drake’s translation, whose copyright page reads “Copyright © 1957 by Stillman Drake ↗” and which remains in print from Anchor ↗. The only earlier English rendering Drake lists is Salusbury’s 1661 version, which is public domain but is a separate 17th-century rendering, not the sentence that circulates today. Short quotation with attribution is ordinary practice; reproducing the translated letter at length is not.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The attribution is right. The wording isn’t.

This is one of the rare famous-scientist quotes that survives checking — Galileo really wrote it, in 1615, in a work we can name. What has drifted is the English. Galileo wrote in Italian, and the sentence you see quoted is a slightly edited version of one modern translator’s rendering.

“… has intended us to forgo their use” Altered

Stillman Drake’s published translation reads “has intended to forgo their use” — in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, p. 183 ↗. The inserted “us” moves the action: Drake’s God declines to bypass our senses; the popular version has God telling us to abandon them. The Italian (“abbia voluto, posponendo l’uso di questi, darci con altro mezo le notizie…”) is on Drake’s side.

“… endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect” Variant

Quote aggregators very often print the singular “sense” and stop the sentence at “forgo their use” — that truncated singular form is what Goodreads shows ↗. Drake, and Wikiquote after him, have the plural “senses,” and the sentence continues: “… and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”

“Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina” with no translator named Incomplete

Nearly every site citing this quote names the 1615 letter and stops. The English that circulates matches the Fordham Modern History Sourcebook text ↗, whose sentences on either side of this one match Drake word for word, and which carries Fordham’s own note that the translation arrived from “a now misplaced correspondent, so its copyright status is uncertain.”

Galileo wrote it. The thought is verifiably his — it is in the 1615 Italian in Le opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. V ↗. Quote it as Galileo, but credit the translator, and prefer Drake’s actual wording.

Context

Why he wrote it

Galileo was not arguing about astronomy here. He was arguing about jurisdiction. A dinner-table challenge in 1613 had put biblical literalism against the motion of the Earth, and by 1615 Galileo had expanded his reply into a long open essay addressed to Christina of Lorraine, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany — a letter meant to be read by people well above his pay grade.

The sentence everyone quotes is the hinge of that argument. If God gave us senses and reason, Galileo says, it makes no sense to suppose God then decided to route around them and hand us the same knowledge some other way. It is a theological argument for empiricism, made by a devout Catholic, and it did not work: an Inquisition investigation opened the same year, and the letter itself circulated only in manuscript ↗ until it was printed at Strasbourg in 1636.

A theological argument for trusting your own eyes — written by a man the Church would silence.

Why the English wording is unstable

Galileo wrote in Italian. Every English version you have ever read is somebody’s translation, and there are far fewer of them than you would guess. Drake’s own appendix lists exactly one earlier English translation of this work: Thomas Salusbury’s The Ancient and Modern Doctrine of Holy Fathers (London, 1661). Drake’s preface says his own version of the letter was “based upon earlier English versions cited in the appendix, corrected and modernized” against the Italian.

That means the quotable modern sentence is essentially Drake’s, published in 1957 — which is why the wording keeps shifting as it is recopied across the web without a translator named. The version that circulates most is a lightly edited Drake, and the edit changes who is doing the forgoing.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Knowledge Doubt Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Galileo Galilei — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries this exact wording in its Sourced section, under the heading “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)”.
Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Drake, 1957) — full textarchive.org

The standard English translation. The passage sits on p. 183; the copyright page reads “Copyright © 1957 by Stillman Drake.”
Lettera a madama Cristina di Lorena — Opere, vol. Vit.wikisource.org

The 1615 Italian original in the Edizione Nazionale — the sentence begins “Ma che quell’istesso Dio che ci ha dotati di sensi…”
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (Modern History Sourcebook)sourcebooks.fordham.edu

The most-copied web text of the letter, and it carries the drifted wording. Fordham’s own note says the translation’s copyright status is uncertain.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background: written 1615, circulated in manuscript, first printed at Strasbourg in 1636 and then suppressed in Catholic jurisdictions.
The Ancient and Modern Doctrine of Holy Fathers (1661)galileo.ou.edu

Oklahoma’s Galileo exhibit on the 1661 London volume that carried the first English translations of Galileo’s works, this letter among them.

The man who wrote it

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei

1564–1642 · Italian astronomer, physicist and natural philosopher

Galileo Galilei turned an improved spyglass on the night sky in 1609 and found moons around Jupiter, mountains on the Moon and phases on Venus — observations that made the Earth-centred cosmos untenable. The Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina is his attempt to argue, in 1615, that scripture and physical demonstration answer different questions and cannot properly contradict each other. The argument did not save him: an Inquisition investigation opened that same year, he was later forced to recant, and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Chicago

Galileo Galilei. “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina” (1615). In Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated with an introduction and notes by Stillman Drake, 173–216. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957 — the passage at p. 183.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-do-not-feel-obliged-to-believe-that-the-same-god-who-has/

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