Paul Tillich Quotes

Where there is faith there is an awareness of holiness.

The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.

The fatal pedagogical error is to throw answers like stones at the heads of those who have not yet asked the questions.

Love that cares, listens.

We must be ourselves, we must decide where to go.

Man creates what he is.

There is no love which does not become help.

Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.

The typical American, after he has lost the foundations of his existence, works for new foundations

Man is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason

Wisdom loves the children of men, but she prefers those who come through foolishness to wisdom.

The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements - as well as one's deepest failures - is a definite symptom of maturity.

Parents need to listen as much to their kids as they do to them: "The first duty of love is to listen."

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith

For encountering God means encountering transcendent security and transcendent eternity.

Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.

Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous YES to one's own true being.

Truth without the way to truth is dead.

...sin is separation.

Our spirituality is the ground of our being.

Fear is the absence of faith.

The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.

Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason.

Wine is like the incarnation
it is both divine and human

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.

In the courageous standing of uncertainty, faith shows most visibly its dynamic character.

The first duty of love is to listen.

He who participates in God participates in eternity.

The courage to die is the test of the courage to be.

Faith embraces itself and the doubt about itself.

Accept the fact that you are accepted, despite the fact that you are unacceptable.

History has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines.

Culture (science) is the form of religion; Religion is the substance of culture (science).

The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.

Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.

He who knows about depth knows about God.

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.

Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature.

There is no condition for forgiveness.

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

Neurosis is the way of avoiding nonbeing by avoiding being

Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.

I loved thee beautiful and kind, And plighted an eternal vow; So altered are thy face and mind, t'were perjury to love thee now!

Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it.

In the depth of the anxiety of having to die is the anxiety of being eternally forgotten.

The separation of faith and love is always a consequence of a deterioration of religion.

Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.

God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.

There is no place to which we could flee from God, which is outside of God.

It is the expression of the anxiety of meaninglessness and of the attempt to take this anxiety into the courage to be as oneself. (139)

Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.

The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the universe .

Nothing truly real is forgotten eternally, because everything real comes from eternity and goes to eternity.

Only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

Knowledge of that which concerns us infinitely is possible only in an attitude of infinite concern.

Boredom is rage spread thin

If my tongue were trained to measures, I would sing a stirring song.

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

Man is not what he believes himself to be in his conscious decisions.

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

For love ... is the blood of life, the power of reunion in the separated.

Love is the infinite which is given to the finite.

The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.

Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.

I hope for the day when everyone can speak of God without embarrassment.

Courage is a greater virtue than love. At best, it takes courage to love.

There is faith in every serious doubt, namely, the faith in the truth as such, even if the only truth we can express is our lack of truth.

Every institution is inherently demonic.

Real joy is a "severe matter"; it is the happiness of a soul which is "lifted above every circumstance.

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God.

One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life.

Faith as the state of being ultimately concerned implies love, namely, the desire and urge toward the reunion of the seperated.