William Sloane Coffin Quotes & Sayings

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

It is often said that the Church is a crutch. Of course it's a crutch. What makes you think you don't limp? — William Sloane Coffin

God provides minimum protection, maximum support
support to help us grow up, to stretch our minds and hearts until they are as wide as God's universe. — William Sloane Coffin

Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts. — William Sloane Coffin

Human beings who blind themselves to human need make themselves less human. — William Sloane Coffin

We are not loved because we are valued; we are valued because we are loved. — William Sloane Coffin

But what I am beginning to suspect is that most guilty people reject the possibility of forgiveness not because it is too good to believe, but because they fear the responsibility forgiveness entails. It's hell to be guilty, but its worse to be responsible. — William Sloane Coffin

Remember also that scars of all sorts are all right. Scars are wounds that have healed, not without a trace, but have healed nonetheless. Think of all the scar tissue around Christ's heart, Jesus our wounded healer. — William Sloane Coffin

Unity is not something we are called to create; it's something we are called to recognize. — William Sloane Coffin

For if you lessen your anger at the structures of power, you lower your love for the victims of power. — William Sloane Coffin

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

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

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

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

Faith handles the ultimate incongruities of life, humor handles the more immediate ones. — William Sloane Coffin

Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality. — William Sloane Coffin

...there is more mercy in God than sin in us. — 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

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

Compassion and justice are companions, not choices. — William Sloane Coffin

We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force. — William Sloane Coffin

In life you can either follow your fears or be led by your values, by your passions. — William Sloane Coffin

All of life is the exercise of risk. — William Sloane Coffin

I asked an 85 year old professor, 'What makes you cry?' He said, 'Whenever I see or hear the truth.' — 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

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

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

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

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

Spirituality means to me living the ordinary life extraordinarily well. As the old-church father said, 'The glory of God is a human being fully alive. — William Sloane Coffin

We put our best foot forward, but it's the other one that needs the attention. — William Sloane Coffin

Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living. — William Sloane Coffin

To be avoided at all costs is the solace of opinion without the pain of thought. — William Sloane Coffin

The consequences of the past are always with us, and half the hostilities tearing the world apart could be resolved today were we to allow the forgiveness of sins to alter these consequences ... if we were to say of ourselves, 'The hostility stops here. — William Sloane Coffin

Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race ... Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never. Let us love our country, but pledge allegiance to the earth and to the flora and fauna and human life that it supports - one planet indivisible, with clean air, ... soil and water; with liberty, justice and peace for all. — William Sloane Coffin

I'm delighted that the future is unsure. That's the way it should be. — William Sloane Coffin

There are two ways to be powerful. One is to seek and acquire power, the other is not to need it. There are also two ways to be rich. One is to gain riches, and the other is not to need them. — William Sloane Coffin

Love is in the giver, not the gift. — William Sloane Coffin

The woman most in need of liberation is the woman in every man and the man in every woman. — William Sloane Coffin

People who fear disorder more than injustice will only produce more of both. — William Sloane Coffin

We want God to be strong, so that we can be weak. But He wants to be weak so that we can be strong. — William Sloane Coffin

It is bad religion to deify doctrines and creeds ... Doctrines, let's not forget, supported slavery and apartheid ... Moreover, doctrines can divide while compassion can only unite. — William Sloane Coffin

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

What is faith? Faith is being grasped by the power of love. — William Sloane Coffin

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

It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one. — William Sloane Coffin

Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible. — 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

But as regards love, I am sure the Bible is right: the opposite of love is not hate but fear. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. — William Sloane Coffin

For finally, we are as we love. It is love that measures our stature. — William Sloane Coffin

We have sold our birthright of freedom and justice for a mess of national security. — 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

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

To love is surely to support and to encourage
but not necessarily to approve. Quite the contrary! If we love one another we will help one another fight against our evil dreams. — William Sloane Coffin

The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history ... Our military men and women ... were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters ... ? — William Sloane Coffin

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

Without love, violence will change the world; it will change it into a more violent one. — William Sloane Coffin

Nuclear Weapons merit unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation — William Sloane Coffin

A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human. — William Sloane Coffin

I'm not OK, you're not OK-and that's OK. — 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

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 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

The banality of guilt is that it is such a convenient substitute for responsibility. It's so much easier to beat your breast than to stick your neck out. — William Sloane Coffin

Many of us overvalue autonomy, the strength to stand alone, the capacity to act independently. Far too few of us pay attention to the virtues of dependence and interdependence, and especially to the capacity to be vulnerable. — William Sloane Coffin

Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love without criticism is a kind of betrayal. Lying is done with silence as well as with words. — William Sloane Coffin

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

I also was persuaded that the woman most in need of liberation was the woman in every man just as the man most in need of liberation was the man in every woman. — William Sloane Coffin

Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice. — William Sloane Coffin