Ernest Becker Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Devastation, Worship

  33 Copy quote

• We are gods with anuses.

  Ernest Becker

  Anus

  4 Copy quote

• ...Erich Fromm wondered why most people did not become insane in the face of the existential contradiction between a symbolic self, that seems to give man infinite worth in a timeless scheme of things, and a body that is worth about 98¢.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Self, People

  "The Denial of Death". Book by Ernest Becker, 1973.

  37 Copy quote

• If the love object is divine perfection, then one's own self is elevated by joining one's destiny to it... All our guilt, fear, and even our mortality itself can be purged in a perfect consummation with perfection itself.

  Ernest Becker

  Destiny, Self, Perfect

  16 Copy quote

• The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Burden, Denial Of Death

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude — even dishonor and betrayal — to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self-effacement, surrender to the “others,” disavowal of any personal dignity or freedom — on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces.

  Ernest Becker

  Betrayal, Real, Depressed Person

  "The Denial of Death".

  6 Copy quote

• The key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared meanings. There is something in his life experience that makes him take in the world as a problem; as a result he has to make personal sense out of it.

  Ernest Becker

  Keys, Creative, World

  Ernest Becker (2014). “The Denial of Death”, p.176, Souvenir Press

  10 Copy quote

• Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.

  Ernest Becker

  Responsibility, Guilt, Burden

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.213, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• Men use one another to assure their personal victory over death.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Victory, Dying

  Ernest Becker (1985). “Escape from Evil”, Free Press

  13 Copy quote

• When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem

  Ernest Becker

  Religious, Real, Men

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.166, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• Genuine heroism for man is still the power to support contradictions, no matter how glaring or hopeless they may seem.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Support, Heroism

  11 Copy quote

• One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war is that each of them feels sorry for the man next to him who will die.

  Ernest Becker

  Sorry, War, Men

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• Horror alone brings peace of mind.

  Ernest Becker

  Mind, Peace Of Mind, Horror

  34 Copy quote

• The creativity of people on the schizophrenic end of the human continuum is a creativity that springs from the inability to accept the standardized cultural denials of the real nature of ex­perience. And the price of this kind of almost "extra human" crea­tivity is to live on the brink of madness, as men have long known.

  Ernest Becker

  Spring, Real, Creativity

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture.

  Ernest Becker

  Sports, Men, Feds

  11 Copy quote

• In seeking to avoid evil, humanity is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts. It is our ingenuity, rather than our animal nature, that has given our fellow creatures such a bitter earthly fate.

  Ernest Becker

  Fate, Exercise, Animal

  5 Copy quote

• All power is in essence power to deny mortality.

  Ernest Becker

  Essence, Existential, Mortality

  ernest becker (1975). “escape from evil”

  7 Copy quote

• To live is to play at the meaning of life...The upshot of this . . . is that it teaches us once and for all that childlike foolishness is the calling of mature men.

  Ernest Becker

  Fun, Men, Play

  7 Copy quote

• What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.

  Ernest Becker

  Lying, Mean, Reality

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• Relationship is thus always slavery of a kind, which leaves a residue of guilt.

  Ernest Becker

  Guilt, Slavery, Kind

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.213, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals.

  Ernest Becker

  Fall, Existential, Denial Of Death

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• Love is the problem of an animal.

  Ernest Becker

  Animal, Love Is, Problem

  9 Copy quote

• The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why - Warren Bennis, Leadership Guru
  It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief

  Ernest Becker

  Animal, Men, Leader

  8 Copy quote

• We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Mad, Cost

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith

  Ernest Becker

  Analysis, Existentialism, Problem

  Ernest Becker (2014). “The Denial of Death”, p.79, Souvenir Press

  5 Copy quote

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