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Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.

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
Neurosis
Avoiding
Way

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Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.
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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.
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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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He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.
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Nothing truly real is forgotten eternally, because everything real comes from eternity and goes to eternity.
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Being human means asking the questions of one's own being and living under the impact of the answers given to this question. And, conversely, being human means receiving answers to the questions of one's own being and asking questions under the impact of the answers.
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We 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.
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Every institution is inherently demonic.
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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.'
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God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.
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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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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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Accept the fact that you are accepted, despite the fact that you are unacceptable.
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Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature.
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Astonishment is the root of philosophy.
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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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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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Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.
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Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.
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Man and nature belong together in their created glory – in their tragedy and in their salvation.
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