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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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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.
Never
Laugh
Love
Anybody
World
Laughing
Dangerous
Small
Truth
Anything
Giver
Really
Gift

More quotes by 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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Jesus is both a mirror to our humanity and a window to divinity, a window revealing as much of God as is given mortal eyes to see. When Christians see Christ empowering the weak, scorning the powerful, healing the wounded, and judging their tormentors, we are seeing transparently the power of God at work.
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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People who fear disorder more than injustice will only produce more of both.
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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It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.
William Sloane Coffin
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To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.
William Sloane Coffin
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In life you can either follow your fears or be led by your values, by your passions.
William Sloane Coffin
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Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself.
William Sloane Coffin
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Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful.
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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Truth is always in danger of being sacrificed on the altars of good taste and social stability.
William Sloane Coffin
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Human unity is not something we are called on to create — only something we are called on to recognize.
William Sloane Coffin
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Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice.
William Sloane Coffin
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In reality, there are no biblical literalists, only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It's time we did the same for homophobia.
William Sloane Coffin
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We are not loved because we are valued we are valued because we are loved.
William Sloane Coffin
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We have sold our birthright of freedom and justice for a mess of national security.
William Sloane Coffin
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The temptation to moralize is strong it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than the flaws in the system.
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