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Isn't that what growing up is all about - learning to outlast despair?

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.
Outlast
Despair
Learning
Growing

More quotes by 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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For finally, we are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.
William Sloane Coffin
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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.
William Sloane Coffin
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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.
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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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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We have sold our birthright of freedom and justice for a mess of national security.
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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There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation.
William Sloane Coffin
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It's so much easier to beat your breast than to stick your neck out.
William Sloane Coffin
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Of God's love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet and secondly, God's love doesn't seek value, it creates value. 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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It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see then we will act in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.
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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The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverance can restrain violence - reverance for human life and the environment.
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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Truth is always in danger of being sacrificed on the altars of good taste and social stability.
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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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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A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.
William Sloane Coffin
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People who fear disorder more than injustice will only produce more of both.
William Sloane Coffin