Paul Tillich Quotes

The first duty of love is to listen.

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

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain ....Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, 'You are accepted.'

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

We have to build a better man before we can build a better society.

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

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

We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea.

Every institution is inherently demonic.

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

The abundance of a grateful heart gives honor to God even if it does not turn to Him in words. An unbeliever who is filled with thanks for his very being has ceased to be an unbeliever.

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.

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

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The affirmation of one's essential being in spite of desires and anxieties creates joy.

Fear is the absence of faith.

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

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

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

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

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

Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.

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

Love that cares, listens.

There is no love which does not become help.

Morality [or ethics] is not a subject; it is a life put to the test in dozens of moments.

Forgiving presupposes remembering.

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

Anxiety may consist of the loss of psychological or spiritual meaning which is identified with one's existence as a self, i.e., the threat of meaninglessness.

There is no condition for forgiveness.

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

Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundations and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.

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

The joy about our work is spoiled when we perform it not because of what we produce but because of the pleasure with which it can provide us, or the pain against which it can protect us.

He who knows about depth knows about God.

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

Boredom is rage spread thin.