Quote

Truth is always in danger of being sacrificed on the altars of good taste and social stability.

William Sloane Coffin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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.
Good
Always
Sacrificed
Altars
Stability
Danger
Taste
Social
Truth

More quotes by William Sloane Coffin

Image
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
Image
Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
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
Image
People who fear disorder more than injustice will only produce more of both.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
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
Image
What is faith? Faith is being grasped by the power of love.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
Compassion and justice are companions, not choices.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It's so much easier to beat your breast than to stick your neck out.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
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
Image
The woman most in need of liberation is the woman in every man and the man in every woman.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
For finally, we are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.
William Sloane Coffin
Image
I asked an 85 year old professor, 'What makes you cry?' He said, 'Whenever I see or hear the truth.'
William Sloane Coffin
Image
Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice.
William Sloane Coffin