Ernest Becker Quotes

Quotes about:

• Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Self, Roots

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

  39 Copy quote

• What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Extinction, Insignificance

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

  40 Copy quote

• What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consiousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would crate such a complex and fancy worm food?

  Ernest Becker

  Mean, Men, Animal

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.87, Simon and Schuster

  64 Copy quote

• If everyone lives roughly the same lies about the same thing, there is no one to call them liars. They jointly establish their own sanity and themselves normal.

  Ernest Becker

  Liars, Lying, Normal

  53 Copy quote

• People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves

  Ernest Becker

  Reality, Order, People

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.158, Simon and Schuster

  54 Copy quote

• The real world is simply too terrible to admit. it tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. Culture changes all of this,makes man seem important,vital to the universe. immortal in some ways

  Ernest Becker

  Real, Men, Animal

  48 Copy quote

• The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.

  Ernest Becker

  Death, Destiny, Men

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  58 Copy quote

• Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.

  Ernest Becker

  Drinking, Men, Shopping

  Ernest Becker (1985). “The Denial of Death”, New York : Free Press

  22 Copy quote

• To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything.

  Ernest Becker

  Awareness, Rumble, Terror

  23 Copy quote

• I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know, that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow?

  Ernest Becker

  Encouragement, Pain, Inspirational Life

  61 Copy quote

• The greatest cause of evil included all human motives in one giant paradox. Good and bad were so inextricably mixed that we couldn't make them out; bad seemed to lead to good, and good motives led to bad. The paradox is that evil comes from man's urge to heroic victory over evil.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Evil, Victory

  34 Copy quote

• War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies.

  Ernest Becker

  War, Class, Safety

  42 Copy quote

• Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.

  Ernest Becker

  Hero, Evil, Victory

  ernest becker (1975). “escape from evil”

  33 Copy quote

• We might say that both the artist and theneurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an ex­ternal, active, work project.

  Ernest Becker

  Artist, Way, Might

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.184, Simon and Schuster

  65 Copy quote

• When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.

  Ernest Becker

  Love, Animal, Men

  27 Copy quote

• It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.

  Ernest Becker

  Lying, Order, Ironic

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.56, Simon and Schuster

  29 Copy quote

• Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Order, Two

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.26, Simon and Schuster

  39 Copy quote

• The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art.

  Ernest Becker

  Art, Personality, World

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.184, Simon and Schuster

  40 Copy quote

• The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

  Ernest Becker

  Inspirational Life, Men, Anxiety

  Ernest Becker (2007). “The Denial of Death”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• We consult astrology charts like the Babylonians, try to make our children into our own image with a firm hand like the Romans, elbow others to get a breath-quickening glimpse of the queen in her ritual procession, and confess to the priests and attend church. And we wonder why, with all this power capital drawn from so many sources, we are deeply anxious about the meaning of our lives. The reason is plain enough: none of these, nor all of them taken together, represents an integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust.

  Ernest Becker

  Queens, Children, Taken

  46 Copy quote

• We are gods with anuses.

  Ernest Becker

  Anus

  5 Copy quote

• The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.

  Ernest Becker

  Creativity, Detours, Ends

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.172, Simon and Schuster

  40 Copy quote

• Guilt results from unused life, from the unlived in us.

  Ernest Becker

  Guilt, Results

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.180, Simon and Schuster

  23 Copy quote

• Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Levels, Existentialism

  Ernest Becker (1985). “The Denial of Death”, New York : Free Press

  17 Copy quote

• Once you base your whole life striving on a desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own undoing.

  Ernest Becker

  Lying, Trying, Desperate

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

  16 Copy quote

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