Paul Tillich

"Depression is rage spread thin."

"Language has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone and the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone."

"For love ... is the blood of life the power of reunion in the separated."

"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."

"You are accepted!" ... accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask the name now perhaps you will know it later. Do not try to do anything perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything do not perform anything do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted."

"Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by and turned to the infinite."

"The first duty of love is to listen."

"Boredom is rage spread thin."

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

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

"The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements - as well as one's deepest failures - is a definite symptom of maturity."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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"

"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"

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

"Astonishment is the root of philosophy."