Quote

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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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.
Society
Sentimental
Rather
Showing
Show
Object
Individual
Loving
Shows
Structure
Without
Concern
Make
Compassion
Objects
Structures

More quotes by William Sloane Coffin

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What is faith? Faith is being grasped by the power of love.
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We put our best foot forward, but it's the other one that needs the attention.
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A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.
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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.
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Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.
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Nuclear Weapons merit unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation
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Human beings who blind themselves to human need make themselves less human.
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I'm delighted that the future is unsure. That's the way it should be.
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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.
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God knows it is emotionally satisfying to be righteous with that righteousness that nourishes itself on the blood of sinners. But God also knows that what is emotionally satisfying can be spiritually devastating.
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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.
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The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life. The more we do God's will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die.
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The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
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People who fear disorder more than injustice will only produce more of both.
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Faith handles the ultimate incongruities of life, humor handles the more immediate ones.
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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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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.
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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.
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The woman most in need of liberation is the woman in every man and the man in every woman.
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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.
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