Paul Tillich Quotations

The first duty of love is to listen.

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.

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

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.

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

Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.

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.

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

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

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

There is no love which does not become help.

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.

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

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

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

Our search for such [moral] principles can start with . . . the unconditional imperative to acknowledge every person as a person. If we ask for the contents given by this absolute, we find, first, something negative-the command not to treat a person as a thing. This seems little, but it is much. It is the core of the principle of justice.

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.

The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality. It is obvious that this kind of courage to be must become conformist the moment its revolutionary attack on that which contradicts reason has ceased, namely in the victorious bourgeoisie.

The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. "Existential" in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one's existence.

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

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

Individualism is the self-affirmation of the individual self as individual self without regard to its participation in its world. As such it is the opposite of collectivism, the self affirmation of the self as part of a larger whole without regard to its character as an individual self.

[American] conformism might approximate collectivism, not so much in economic respects, and not too much in political respects, but very much in the pattern of daily life and thought. Whether this will happen or not, and if it does to what degree, is partly dependent on the power of resistance in those who represent the opposite pole of the courage to be, the courage to be as oneself.

Plato ... teaches the separation of the human soul from its " home " in the realm of pure essences. Man is estranged from what he essentially is. His existence in a transitory world contradicts his essential participation in the eternal world of ideas .

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.

He who knows about depth knows about God.

Fear, as opposed to anxiety, has a definite object, which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured... anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation of every object.

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

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

In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.

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

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

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

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

Love is the infinite which is given to the finite.

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

Existential anxiety of doubt drives the person toward the creation of certitude of systems of meaning, which are supported by tradition and authority. Neurotic anxiety builds a narrow castle of certitude which can be defended with the utmost certainty.

In Calvinism and sectarianism man became more and more transformed into an abstract moral subject, as in Descartes he was considered an epistemological subject.

Man and nature belong together in their created glory – in their tragedy and in their salvation.

Destiny is not a strange power which determines what shall happen to me. It is myself as given, formed by nature, history, and myself. My destiny is the basis of my freedom; my freedom participates in shaping my destiny.

But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision.

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

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.

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

The citizens of a city are not guilty of the crimes committed in their city; but they are guilty as participants in the destiny of [humanity] as a whole and in the destiny of their city in particular; for their acts in which freedom was united with destiny have contributed to the destiny in which they participate. They are guilty, not of committing the crimes of which their group is accused, but of contributing to the destiny in which these crimes happened.

Only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

Our spirituality is the ground of our being.

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

Wine is like the incarnation--it is both divine and human

Mystical identification transcends the aristocratic virtue of courageous self-sacrifice. It is self- surrender in a higher, more complete, and more complete and more radical form. It is the perfect form of self-affirmation.

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

Faith embraces itself and the doubt about itself.

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

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

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

We are known in a depth of darkness through which we ourselves do not even dare to look. And at the same time, we are seen in a height of a fullness which surpasses our highest vision.

Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It happens in the center of the personal life and includes all its elements. Faith is the most centered act of the human mind. It is not a movement of a special section or a special function of (our) total being. They all are united in the act of faith.

Where there is faith there is an awareness of holiness.

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.

Love that cares, listens.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of man's spiritual life was that the word "spirit" was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in "spirit" was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Man was divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality. The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul, in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped.

[A] process was going on in which people were transformed into things, into pieces of reality which pure science can calculate and technical science can control. … [T]he safety which is guaranteed by well-functioning mechanisms for the technical control of nature, by the refined psychological control of the person, by the rapidly increasing organizational control of society – this safety is bought at a high price: man, for whom all this was invented as a means, becomes a means himself in the service of means.

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.

Boredom is rage spread thin.

There is no condition for forgiveness.

Forgiving presupposes remembering.

Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.

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

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

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

Fear is the absence of faith.

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!

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

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

In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.

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

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

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

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

Out of the element of participation follows the certainty of faith; out of the element of separation follows the doubt in faith. And each is essential for the nature of faith. Sometimes certainty conquers doubt, but it cannot eliminate doubt. The conquered of today may become the conqueror of tomorrow. Sometimes doubt conquers faith, but it still contains faith. Otherwise it would be indifference.

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

I have given no definition of love. This is impossible, because there is no higher principle by which it could be defined. It is life itself in its actual unity. The forms and structures in which love embodies itself are the forms and structures in which love overcomes its self-destructive forces.

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

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

The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to humankind, to the universe, and the Ground of all being, the aim of our life.

Every person, every place and every action is qualified by this association with the unconditional; it penetrates every moment of daily life and sanctifies it: "The Universe is God's sanctuary. Every work day is a day of the Lord, every supper is a Lord's supper, every work a fulfillment of the divine task, every joy a joy in God. In all preliminary concerns, ultimate concern is present, consecrating them."

Enthusiasm for the universe, in knowing as well as in creating, also answers the question of doubt and meaninglessness. Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge. And meaninglessness is no threat so long as enthusiasm for the universe and for man as its center is alive.

Being human means asking the questions of one's own being and living under the impact of the answers given to this question. And, conversely, being human means receiving answers to the questions of one's own being and asking questions under the impact of the answers.

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

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.