Top 100 Paul Tillich Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.”

— Paul Tillich

2. “The first duty of love is to listen.”

— Paul Tillich

3. “God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.”

— Paul Tillich

4. “The fatal pedagogical error is to throw answers like stones at the heads of those who have not yet asked the questions.”

— Paul Tillich

5. “Fear is the absence of faith.”

— Paul Tillich

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

— Paul Tillich

7. “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”

— Paul Tillich

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

— Paul Tillich

9. “The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to humankind, to the universe, and the Ground of all being, the aim of our life.”

— Paul Tillich

10. “Courage is a greater virtue than love. At best, it takes courage to love.”

— Paul Tillich

11. “The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God.”

— Paul Tillich

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

— Paul Tillich

13. “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

14. “Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.”

— Paul Tillich

15. “Accept the fact that you are accepted, despite the fact that you are unacceptable.”

— Paul Tillich

16. “The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.”

— Paul Tillich

17. “In the courageous standing of uncertainty, faith shows most visibly its dynamic character.”

— Paul Tillich

18. “There is no love which does not become help.”

— Paul Tillich

19. “Boredom is rage spread thin.”

— Paul Tillich

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

— Paul Tillich

21. “One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life.”

— Paul Tillich

22. “Man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.”

— Paul Tillich

23. “Theology 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 Tillich

24. “Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.”

— Paul Tillich

25. “He who knows about depth knows about God.”

— Paul Tillich

26. “The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.”

— Paul Tillich

27. “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.”

— Paul Tillich

28. “The 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 Tillich

29. “Parents need to listen as much to their kids as they do to them: “The first duty of love is to listen.””

— Paul Tillich

30. “The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.”

— Paul Tillich

31. “Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.”

— Paul Tillich

32. “In 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 Tillich

33. “The separation of faith and love is always a consequence of a deterioration of religion.”

— Paul Tillich

34. “There 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 Tillich

35. “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.”

— Paul Tillich

36. “Faith as the state of being ultimately concerned implies love, namely, the desire and urge toward the reunion of the separated.”

— Paul Tillich

37. “There is no condition for forgiveness.”

— Paul Tillich

38. “Mystical 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 Tillich

39. “Astonishment is the root of philosophy.”

— Paul Tillich

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

— Paul Tillich

41. “There is no place to which we could flee from God, which is outside of God.”

— Paul Tillich

42. “Philosophy deals with the structure of being in itself; theology deals with the meaning of being for us.”

— Paul Tillich

43. “Every institution is inherently demonic.”

— Paul Tillich

44. “Man and nature belong together in their created glory – in their tragedy and in their salvation.”

— Paul Tillich

45. “Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.”

— Paul Tillich

46. “Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.”

— Paul Tillich

47. “I loved thee beautiful and kind, And plighted an eternal vow; So altered are thy face and mind, t’were perjury to love thee now!”

— Paul Tillich

48. “The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the universe .”

— Paul Tillich

49. “The law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law; it is absolute because it concerns everything concrete. The paradox of final revelation, overcoming the conflict between absolutism and relativism, is love.”

— Paul Tillich

50. “Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.”

— Paul Tillich