Paul Tillich Quotes
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American Lutheran theologian and philosopher of religion and one of the most widely read religious thinkers of the twentieth century. After service as a chaplain on the Western Front in the First World War, he taught at Marburg, Dresden, Leipzig, and Frankfurt before being dismissed by the Nazi government in 1933 as the first non-Jewish professor barred from German universities. The quotes below are attributed to Paul Tillich, organized by topic.
Browse Paul Tillich by topic
Paul Tillich on God
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“Faith is being grasped by an ultimate concern.”
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.”
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“Religion is the substance of culture; culture is the form of religion.”
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“Against Pascal I say: The God of Abraham , Isaac , and Jacob and the God of the philosophers is the same God. He is a person and the negation of himself as a person. Faith comprises both itself and the doubt of itself. The Christ is Jesus and the negation of Jesus .”
Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (1955), p. 80 -
“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.”
p. 82 -
“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 .”
The Courage to Be(1952) | p. 127
Paul Tillich on Knowledge
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“Philosophy and Fate", a translation of his inaugural address as chair of Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfort on the Main (June 1929)”
As Hegel called the place at the end of philosophy the "place of truth," so Marx thought that the proletariat occupies this favored position, and the psychoanalyst attributes it to the completely analyzed personality, and the philosopher of vitalism to the strongest life, to the process of growth, to an élite or a race. There are, according to these ideas, favored moments and positions in history -
“Knowledge of that which concerns us infinitely is possible only in an attitude of infinite concern.”
The Courage to Be(1952) | p. 125 -
“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.”
The Courage to Be(1952) | p. 121
Paul Tillich on Life
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Attributed to Paul Tillich:
“Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone; solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”
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“Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The content matters infinitely for the life of the believer, but it does not matter for the formal definition of faith. And this is the first step we have to make in order to understand the dynamics of faith.”
Dynamics of Faith(1957)
Paul Tillich on Love
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“We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.”
The New Being(1955) | Chap. 1: "To Whom Much is Forgiven..."
Paul Tillich on Mind
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“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.”
p. 116
Paul Tillich on Nature
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“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.”
p. 113
Paul Tillich on Politics
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“[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.”
p. 112 -
“Philosophy asks the question of reality as a whole; it asks the question of the structure of being. And it answers in terms of categories, structural laws , and universal concepts.”
Systematic Theology(1951–63) -
“The second element in absolute faith is the dependence of the experience of nonbeing on the experience on being and the dependence of the experience of meaninglessness on the experience of meaning . even in the state of despair one has enough being to make despair possible.”
The Courage to Be(1952) | p. 177
Paul Tillich on Time
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“The Ambiguity of Perfection”, Time (May 17, 1963)”
It is my conviction that the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, of true and false, of creative and destructive forces—both individual and social. Sometimes I have the feeling that [irony] shows some awareness of the ambiguity of life—as long as it does not degenerate into mere cynicism. The awareness of the am
Paul Tillich on Truth
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“It is my conviction that the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, of true and false, of creative and destructive forces—both individual and social. Sometimes I have the feeling that [irony] shows some awareness of the ambiguity of life—as long as it does not degenerate into mere cynicism. The awareness of the ambiguity of one's own highest achievements (as well as one's own deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity.”
The Ambiguity of Perfection”, Time (May 17, 1963) -
“There is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice.”
Love, Power and Justice(1954) | p. 21 -
“Without the eros toward truth, theology would not exist.”
Love, Power and Justice(1954) | p. 31
Paul Tillich on Virtue
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“At the end of ancient civilization ontic anxiety is predominant, at the end of the Middle Ages moral anxiety, and at the end of the modern period spiritual anxiety.”
p.57