Paul Tillich Quotes

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

Let him make use of instinct who cannot make use of reason.

A human being is a deciding being.

Reason is the servant of instinct.

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

The truth is, man is hereunto led by reason which is his nature.

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be either good or evil.

The more, therefore, we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

Reason also is choice.

[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.

The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.

The will of man is by his reason sway'd.

Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man's mental or moral economy.

Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.

It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.

Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions