“What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
The real world is simply too terrible to admit. it tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Genuine heroism for man is still the power to support contradictions, no matter how glaring or hopeless they may seem. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why - Warren Bennis, Leadership Guru It is not so much… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
...Erich Fromm wondered why most people did not become insane in the face of the existential contradiction between a symbolic self, that… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
The creativity of people on the schizophrenic end of the human continuum is a creativity that springs from the inability to accept… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
To live is to play at the meaning of life...The upshot of this . . . is that it teaches us once… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
The greatest cause of evil included all human motives in one giant paradox. Good and bad were so inextricably mixed that we… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war is that each of them feels… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“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… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“the characteristics the modern mind prides itself on are precisely those of madness.” — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Relationship is thus always slavery of a kind, which leaves a residue of guilt. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“neurosis as a problem of character and have seen that it can be approached in two ways: as a problem of too much narrowness… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“This is one of the reasons for bigotry and censorship of all kinds over personal morality: people fear that the standard morality will be… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“Civilized" society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
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… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“Understanding this, Rank could take a great step beyond Freud. Freud thought that modern man’s moral dependence on another was a result of the… — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
“The world of human aspiration is largely fictitious and if we do not understand this we understand nothing about man.” — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
