Paul Tillich Quotes

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

Faith includes both an immediate awareness of something unconditional and the courage to take the risk of uncertainty upon itself. Faith says Yes in spite of the anxiety of No.Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality

~ Paul Tillich

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. Paul Tillich

~ Paul Tillich

man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity

~ Paul Tillich

Only if God IS ultimate reality, can he be our unconditional concern; only then can he be the object of surrender, obedience, and assent. Faith in anything which has only preliminary reality is idolatrous.

~ Paul Tillich

Faith…is a concern of the whole person; it is the most personal concern, and that which determines all others. …it is not something which we can produce by the will to believe, but that by which we are grasped.

~ Paul Tillich

Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.

~ Paul Tillich

Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone. Although, in daily life, we do not always distinguish these words, we should do so consistently and thus deepen our understanding of our human predicament.

~ Paul Tillich

Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.

~ Paul Tillich

Man lives 'in' meanings, in that which is valid logically, esthetically, religiously. The most fundamental expression of this fact is the language which gives man the power to abstract from the concretely given and, after having abstracted from it, to return to it, to interpret and transform it. The most vital being is the being which has the word and is by the word liberated from bondage to the given.

~ Paul Tillich

Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind.

~ Paul Tillich

This is biblical ethics. It has little to do with the middle-class ethics of avoiding a few things which are supposed to be wrong and doing a few things which are supposed to be right. Biblical ethics means standing in ultimate decisions for or against God.

~ Paul Tillich

...sin is separation.

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

[a] characteristic of a symbol is that it opens up levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us.[a symbol] also unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality. A great play gives us not only a new vision of the human scene, but it opens up hidden depths of our own being.

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

Christianity sees in the picture of Jesus as the Christ a human life in which all forms of anxiety are present but in which all forms of despair are absent.

~ Paul Tillich

It is most important for the practice of the Christian ministry, especially in its missionary activities toward those both within and without the Christian culture, to consider pagans, humanists, and Jews as members of the latent Spiritual Community and not as complete strangers who are invited into the Spiritual Community from outside. This insight serves as a powerful weapon against ecclesiastical and hierarchical arrogance.

~ Paul Tillich

...only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

~ Paul Tillich

Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.

~ Paul Tillich

Boredom is rage spread thin.

~ Paul Tillich

Boredom is rage spread thin.

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

Fear is the absence of faith.

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

The first duty of love is to listen.

~ Paul Tillich

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich

Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.

~ Paul Tillich

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

~ Paul Tillich