Our search for such [moral] principles can start with . . . the unconditional imperative to acknowledge every person as a person. If we ask for the contents given by this absolute, we find, first, something negative-the command not to treat a person as a thing. This seems little, but it is much. It is the core of the principle of justice.
Paul TillichOut 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 TillichKnowledge of that which concerns us infinitely is possible only in an attitude of infinite concern.
Paul TillichSometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.
Paul TillichThe abundance of a grateful heart gives honor to God even if it does not turn to Him in words. An unbeliever who is filled with thanks for his very being has ceased to be an unbeliever.
Paul TillichWe 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 TillichTheology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundations and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.
Paul TillichLanguage... 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 TillichMystical identification transcends the aristocratic virtue of courageous self-sacrifice. It is self- surrender in a higher, more complete, and more complete and more radical form. It is the perfect form of self-affirmation.
Paul TillichMan and nature belong together in their created glory – in their tragedy and in their salvation.
Paul TillichThe vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.
Paul TillichGenuine forgiveness is participation, reunion overcoming the powers of estrangement. . . We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.
Paul TillichThe character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces-both individual and social.
Paul TillichMan is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason
Paul TillichThere 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 TillichIn the depth of the anxiety of having to die is the anxiety of being eternally forgotten.
Paul TillichForgiving presupposes remembering. And it creates a forgetting not in the natural way we forget yesterday's weather, but in the way of the great "in spite of" that says: I forget although I remember. Without this kind of forgetting no human relationship can endure healthily. I don't refer to a solemn act of asking for and offering forgiveness. Such rituals as sometimes occur between parents and children, or friends, or man and wife, are often acts of moral arrogance on the one part and enforced humiliation on the other. But I speak of the lasting willingness to accept him who has hurt us.
Paul TillichIn this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware
Paul TillichGod does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.
Paul TillichWe 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 TillichCulture (science) is the form of religion; Religion is the substance of culture (science).
Paul TillichMan's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.
Paul TillichWhy does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.
Paul TillichSpirit is the presence of what concerns us ultimately, the ground of our being and meaning.
Paul TillichThe courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.
Paul TillichReligion 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 TillichFaith 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.
Paul TillichIn those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.
Paul Tillich