Quotes by Paul Tillich

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

“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 not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being”

“The Christ is God-for-us! But God is not only for us, [God] is for everything created.”

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.