Quotes by Paul Tillich

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) — Theologe · Lutherisch · USA

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) war ein deutsch-amerikanischer evangelisch-lutherischer Theologe und Religionsphilosoph, der nach seiner Amtsenthebung durch die Nationalsozialisten vor allem an Universitäten in den USA lehrte. Bekannt wurde er für seine Methode der Korrelation zwischen existentiellen Fragen der Moderne und christlicher Offenbarung sowie für die Definition Gottes als „Grund des Seins“. Für Bibelleser bietet sein Denken Zugänge zu Themen wie Angst und Zweifel, während seine philosophische Umdeutung traditioneller Dogmen umstritten bleibt und posthum Vorwürfe über das Ausnutzen von Abhängigkeitsverhältnissen gegenüber Studentinnen bekannt wurden.

Era: The 20th Century

Recurring topics: Faith & Trust, Wisdom & Understanding, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Meaning & Identity, Courage & Strength, Doubt & Hard Questions, Peace & Rest, Fear & Anxiety

Quotes by Paul Tillich

Accept the fact that you are accepted.
Paul Tillich

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
Paul Tillich

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

Tugas pertama mencintai adalah mendengar.
Paul Tillich

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

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.
Paul Tillich

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

No self-acceptance is possible if one is not accepted in a person-to-person relation.
Paul Tillich

The gratitude of those who receive help is first and always gratitude for love and only afterwards gratitude for help.
Paul Tillich

He who is grasped by the one thing that is needed has the many things under his feet. They concern him but not ultimately, and when he loses them he does not lose the one thing he needs and that cannot be taken from him.
Paul Tillich

God accepts us because he loves us, and not because of any word we say or any deed we perform.
Paul Tillich

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

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

Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous YES to one's own true being.
Paul Tillich

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

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

Reasoning as a limited cognitive function, detached from the personal center, never could create courage. One cannot remove anxiety by arguing it away.
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

In all these warnings against pleasure, truth is mixed with untruth. Insofar as they strengthen our responsibility, they are true; insofar as they undercut our joy, they are wrong.
Paul Tillich

The faith which makes the courage of despair possible is the acceptance of the power of being, even in the grip of non-being. Even in the despair about meaning being affirms itself through us. The act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. It is an act of faith.
Paul Tillich

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

Anxiety is the absence of trust.
Paul Tillich

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

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

He who participates in God participates in eternity.
Paul Tillich

Truth without the way to truth is dead.
Paul Tillich

Providence,” he argues, “is not a theory about some activities of God; it is the religious symbol of the courage of confidence with respect to fate and death.
Paul Tillich

There are people who are blind to all beauty that is more than a pleasant feeling. There are people who are blind to all truth that is more than correct observation and calculation. There are people who are blind to the good that is more than the useful.
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

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

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.
Paul Tillich

Wine is like the incarnation-it is both divine and human.
Paul Tillich

For encountering God means encountering transcendent security and transcendent eternity.
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 meaning of life.
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

Courage as an element of faith is the daring self-affirmation of one's own being in spite of the powers of "non-being" which are the heritage of everything finite.
Paul Tillich

God is always revived in something or somebody; He cannot be murdered. The story of every atheism is the same.
Paul Tillich

God acts contrary to all human expectations. He acts surprisingly, unexpectedly, paradoxically.
Paul Tillich

66 quotes in total — browse the collection.

Sources: bu.edu, medium.com, bltnotjustasandwich.com, westarinstitute.org

All quotes · lumen.bible