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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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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.
Sticks
Beat
Beats
Easier
Breast
Much
Neck
Necks
Breasts
Stick
More quotes by William Sloane Coffin
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
There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation.
William Sloane Coffin
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
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
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
Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice.
William Sloane Coffin
We are not loved because we are valued we are valued because we are loved.
William Sloane Coffin
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
Love is in the giver, not the gift.
William Sloane Coffin
It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, Let justice roll down like mighty waters, and quite another to work out the irrigation system.
William Sloane Coffin
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
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
I'm delighted that the future is unsure. That's the way it should be.
William Sloane Coffin
Human beings who blind themselves to human need make themselves less human.
William Sloane Coffin
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
Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.
William Sloane Coffin
Only reverence can restrain violence - reverence for human life and the environment.
William Sloane Coffin
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
The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
William Sloane Coffin
Without love, violence will change the world it will change it into a more violent one.
William Sloane Coffin