Paul Tillich Quotes

78 Sourced Quotes

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.

Paul Tillich
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.

Paul Tillich
Only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

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

Paul Tillich
Only the eternal can save us from the anxiety of being a meaningless bit of matter in a meaningless vortex of atoms and electrons.

Paul Tillich
Now the way into the profounder levels of life is not to be found by means of physical and psychological analysis but only by means of intuitive insight, of apprehension on the basis of one's own aliveness.

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

Paul Tillich
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.

Paul Tillich
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.

Paul Tillich
Theology cannot rest on scientific theory. But it must relate its understanding of man to an understanding of universal nature, for man is a part of nature and statements about nature underlie every statement about him.

Paul Tillich
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.

Paul Tillich
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.

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

Paul Tillich
There are realms of reality or — more exactly — of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. Everything which can be expressed in terms of quantitative measurement has this character. But it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. But by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing.

Paul Tillich
Life remains ambiguous as long as there is life. The question implied in the ambiguities of life derives to a new question, namely, that of the direction in which life moves. This is the question of history. Systematically speaking, history, characterized as it as by its direction

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
[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.

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

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

Paul Tillich
What is the end of all the magnificent means provided by the productive activity of American society? Have not the means swallowed the ends, and does not the unrestricted production of means indicate the absence of ends? Even many born Americans are today inclined to answer the last question affirmatively. But there is more involved in the production of means. It is not the tools and gadgets that are the telos, the inner aim of production; it is the production itself. The means are more than means; they are felt as creations, as symbols of the infinite possibilities implied in man's productivity. Being-itself is essentially productive.

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

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

Paul Tillich
Man is infinitely concerned about the infinity to which he belongs, from which he is separated, and for which he is longing. Man is totally concerned about the totality which is his true being and which is disrupted in time and space. Man is unconditionally concerned about that which conditions his being beyond all the conditions in him and around him. Man is ultimately concerned about that which determines his ultimate destiny beyond all preliminary necessities and accidents.

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

Paul Tillich