Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.
Paul TillichRead
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
Interpretation
Faith is deeply linked to our understanding of the ultimate reality, often symbolized as God, and contemplating life's meaning leads to acts of faith.
In this quote, Paul Tillich emphasizes the importance of faith as a vital concern for a higher reality, which he identifies symbolically as God. He suggests that those who seriously contemplate the meaning of life are naturally led to a state of faith, indicating that the search for meaning and the acknowledgment of a greater existence are intertwined.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of belief systems, one might quote this to illustrate the link between faith and the search for meaning.
Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.
He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.
The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.
The citizens of a city are not guilty of the crimes committed in their city; but they are guilty as participants in the destiny of [humanity] as a whole and in the destiny of their city in particular; for their acts in which freedom was united with destiny have contributed to the destiny in which they participate. They are guilty, not of committing the crimes of which their group is accused, but of contributing to the destiny in which these crimes happened.
Wine is like the incarnation--it is both divine and human
Man is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason
Nothing will make me change my principles. Even with the knife at my neck I shall still declare, up to this day, the poor have done everything; it is time for the rich to take their turn... The selfish people, the young idlers, must be made useful, whether they like it or not, and some respite be procured for the useful and respectable worker.
Home is where you hang your head.
I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity.
Know what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of Baptism; it is to believe in belief; it is to be so little that elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child had its fairy godmother in its soul.
It's not possible to search for God using the methods of a detective... There is no way. You can only wait till God's axe severs your roots: then you will understand that you are here only through a miracle, and you will remain fixed forever in wonderment and equilibrium.
Ethical existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality.
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