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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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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.
Mess
National
Security
Justice
Freedom
Birthright
Sold

More quotes by William Sloane Coffin

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Human beings who blind themselves to human need make themselves less human.
William Sloane Coffin
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Isn't that what growing up is all about - learning to outlast despair?
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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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
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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
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It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion the Bible seeks to open one.
William Sloane Coffin
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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
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All of life is the exercise of risk.
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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We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.
William Sloane Coffin
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Socrates had it wrong it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.
William Sloane Coffin
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Nuclear Weapons merit unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation
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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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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Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.
William Sloane Coffin
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I'm not OK, you're not OK-and that's OK.
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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Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.
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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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