Paul Tillich Quotes on Life
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. This page collects quotes attributed to Paul Tillich on the topic of life, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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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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“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) -
“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 -
“[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