Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Tillich
Age: 79 †
Born: 1886
Born: August 20
Died: 1965
Died: October 22
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Paul Johannes Oskar Tillich
Paul Johannes Tillich
Religion
Asking
Means
Meaning
Mean
Question
Even
Willing
Answers
Hurt
Existence
Passionately
Religious
Receive

More quotes by Paul Tillich

Image
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
Image
The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the universe .
Paul Tillich
Image
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
Image
The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God.
Paul Tillich
Image
There is no condition for forgiveness.
Paul Tillich
Image
Genuine 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 Tillich
Image
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain ....Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, 'You are accepted.'
Paul Tillich
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Knowledge of that which concerns us infinitely is possible only in an attitude of infinite concern.
Paul Tillich
Image
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
Image
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 Tillich
Image
Wisdom loves the children of men, but she prefers those who come through foolishness to wisdom.
Paul Tillich
Image
Accept the fact that you are accepted, despite the fact that you are unacceptable.
Paul Tillich
Image
Astonishment is the root of philosophy.
Paul Tillich
Image
Courage is a greater virtue than love. At best, it takes courage to love.
Paul Tillich
Image
The fatal pedagogical error is to throw answers like stones at the heads of those who have not yet asked the questions.
Paul Tillich
Image
Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.
Paul Tillich
Image
Fear, as opposed to anxiety, has a definite object, which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured... anxiety has no object, or rather, in a paradoxical phrase, its object is the negation of every object.
Paul Tillich
Image
Only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.
Paul Tillich