Quote

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

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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
Question
Preliminary
Answers
Grasped
State
Contains
Religion
Concerns
States
Concern
Life
Ultimate
Answer
Meaning
Qualifies

More quotes by Paul Tillich

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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.
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The first duty of love is to listen.
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Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It happens in the center of the personal life and includes all its elements. Faith is the most centered act of the human mind. It is not a movement of a special section or a special function of man's total being. They all are united in the act of faith.
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The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.
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The fatal pedagogical error is to throw answers like stones at the heads of those who have not yet asked the questions.
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One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion it is the blood of life.
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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 .
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Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.
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man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom that is, he can surrender his humanity
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Knowledge of that which concerns us infinitely is possible only in an attitude of infinite concern.
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The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the universe .
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The separation of faith and love is always a consequence of a deterioration of religion.
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For love ... is the blood of life, the power of reunion in the separated.
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Doubt is not the opposite of faith it is one element of faith.
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The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. Existential in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one's existence.
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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.
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The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements, as well as one's deepest failures is a definite symptom of maturity.
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The affirmation of one's essential being in spite of desires and anxieties creates joy.
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Existential anxiety of doubt drives the person toward the creation of certitude of systems of meaning, which are supported by tradition and authority. Neurotic anxiety builds a narrow castle of certitude which can be defended with the utmost certainty.
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Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.
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