The collection / 47 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

Paul Tillich / quote

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02Undated

Man is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason

Paul Tillich / quote

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03Undated

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

Paul Tillich / quote

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04Undated

Faith as the state of being ultimately concerned implies love, namely, the desire and urge toward the reunion of the seperated.

Paul Tillich / quote

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05Undated

Faith includes both an immediate awareness of something unconditional and the courage to take the risk of uncertainty upon itself. Faith says "Yes" in spite of the anxiety of "No."Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality

Paul Tillich / quote

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06Undated

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

Paul Tillich / quote

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07Undated

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

Paul Tillich / quote

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08Undated

Only if God IS ultimate reality, can he be our unconditional concern; only then can he be the object of surrender, obedience, and assent. Faith in anything which has only preliminary reality is idolatrous.

Paul Tillich / quote

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09Undated

Faith…is a concern of the whole person; it is the most personal concern, and that which determines all others. …it is not something which we can produce by the will to believe, but that by which we are grasped.

Paul Tillich / quote

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10Undated

Paul Tillich / quote

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11Undated

Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It 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. Although, in daily life, we do not always distinguish these words, we should do so consistently and thus deepen our understanding of our human predicament.

Paul Tillich / quote

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12Undated

Language 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 Tillich / quote

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13Undated

Man lives 'in' meanings, in that which is valid logically, esthetically, religiously. The most fundamental expression of this fact is the language which gives man the power to abstract from the concretely given and, after having abstracted from it, to return to it, to interpret and transform it. The most vital being is the being which has the word and is by the word liberated from bondage to the given.

Paul Tillich / quote

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14Undated

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. 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 / quote

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15Undated

Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind.

Paul Tillich / quote

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16Undated

This is biblical ethics. It has little to do with the middle-class ethics of avoiding a few things which are supposed to be wrong and doing a few things which are supposed to be right. Biblical ethics means standing in ultimate decisions for or against God.

Paul Tillich / quote

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17Undated

...sin is separation.

Paul Tillich / quote

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18Undated

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 / quote

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19Undated

[a] characteristic of a symbol is that it opens up levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us.[a symbol] also unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality. A great play gives us not only a new vision of the human scene, but it opens up hidden depths of our own being.

Paul Tillich / quote

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20Undated

Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason.

Paul Tillich / quote

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21Undated

Christianity sees in the picture of Jesus as the Christ a human life in which all forms of anxiety are present but in which all forms of despair are absent.

Paul Tillich / quote

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22Undated

It is most important for the practice of the Christian ministry, especially in its missionary activities toward those both within and without the Christian culture, to consider pagans, humanists, and Jews as members of the latent Spiritual Community and not as complete strangers who are invited into the Spiritual Community from outside. This insight serves as a powerful weapon against ecclesiastical and hierarchical arrogance.

Paul Tillich / quote

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23Undated

...only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

Paul Tillich / quote

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24Undated

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

Paul Tillich / quote

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