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I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.

William Sloane Coffin

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William Sloane Coffin
Age: 81 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 1
Died: 2006
Died: April 12
Activist
Pastor
New York City
New York
William Sloane Coffin
Jr.
Faith
Firsts
First
Love
Recklessness
Leap
Wings
Grow
Grows

More quotes by William Sloane Coffin

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We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.
William Sloane Coffin
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It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, [for] all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly.
William Sloane Coffin
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If your heart is full of fear, you won't seek truth you'll seek security. If a heart is full of love, it will have a limbering effect on the mind.
William Sloane Coffin
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We call on all members of America's religious communities, as a testament of our common faith, to join Faithful Security, and to take action immediately to break faith with nuclear weapons.
William Sloane Coffin
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Love is in the giver, not the gift.
William Sloane Coffin
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Christians have to listen to the world as well as to the Word - to science, to history, to what reason and our own experience tell us. We do not honor the higher truth we find in Christ by ignoring truths found elsewhere.
William Sloane Coffin
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The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love. We can never really love anybody with whom we never laugh. Love is in the giver, not the gift.
William Sloane Coffin
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Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.
William Sloane Coffin
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Truth is always in danger of being sacrificed on the altars of good taste and social stability.
William Sloane Coffin
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Socrates had it wrong it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.
William Sloane Coffin
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The woman most in need of liberation is the woman in every man and the man in every woman.
William Sloane Coffin
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Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.
William Sloane Coffin
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Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one--neither clothes nor age neither sex nor sexual preference race nor mind-set.
William Sloane Coffin
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To be avoided at all costs is the solace of opinion without the pain of thought.
William Sloane Coffin
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For Christians, the problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ.
William Sloane Coffin
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In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent.
William Sloane Coffin
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A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.
William Sloane Coffin
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What is faith? Faith is being grasped by the power of love.
William Sloane Coffin
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The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
William Sloane Coffin
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There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country, a reflection of God's lover's quarrel with all the world.
William Sloane Coffin