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When a man is drowning, it may be better for him to try to swim than to thrash around waiting for divine intervention.
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.
Men
Intervention
Swim
Divine
Waiting
Around
May
Better
Thrash
Trying
Drowning
More quotes by William Sloane Coffin
Christ came to take away our sins, not our minds.
William Sloane Coffin
Human beings who blind themselves to human need make themselves less human.
William Sloane Coffin
Compassion and justice are companions, not choices.
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
Nuclear Weapons merit unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation
William Sloane Coffin
Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.
William Sloane Coffin
Without love, violence will change the world it will change it into a more violent one.
William Sloane Coffin
We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.
William Sloane Coffin
Faith handles the ultimate incongruities of life, humor handles the more immediate ones.
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
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
Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are.
William Sloane Coffin
A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.
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
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
For finally, we are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.
William Sloane Coffin
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
Isn't that what growing up is all about - learning to outlast despair?
William Sloane Coffin
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.
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
