Men use one another to assure their personal victory over death. — Ernest Becker Death Copy Share Image
Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility. — Ernest Becker Burden Copy Share Image
“modern man tries to replace vital awe and wonder with a “How to do it” manual.” — Ernest Becker Awe and wonder 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 Complexes Copy Share Image
If everyone lives roughly the same lies about the same thing, there is no one to call them liars. They jointly establish… — Ernest Becker Ifs 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 Achieve Copy Share Image
War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or… — Ernest Becker Class 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 Awareness Copy Share Image
“one of the great dangers of life is too much possibility, and that the place where we find people who have succumbed… — Ernest Becker Danger 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 Aspiration 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… — Ernest Becker Neurosis 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 Alive Copy Share Image
“Man is naturally humble, naturally grateful, naturally guilty, naturally transcended, naturally a sufferer; he is small, pitiful, weak, a passive taker who… — Ernest Becker Humble Copy Share Image
“There is no point in lingering on the fallacies of the revolutionaries of unrepression; one could go on and on, but everything… — Ernest Becker Impossibility Copy Share Image
“The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a… — Ernest Becker Animals 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 Bounds 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 Awareness Copy Share Image
In seeking to avoid evil, humanity is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by… — Ernest Becker Animal 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 Activity Copy Share Image
“And so, beginning with the small early frustrations and deprivations, the child is helped to govern himself. his ego develops by learning… — Ernest Becker Children Copy Share Image
“If the partner becomes God he can just as easily become the Devil; the reason is not far to seek. For one… — Ernest Becker Good and bad Copy Share Image
“Too much possibility is the attempt by the person to overvalue the powers of the symbolic self. It reflects the attempt to… — Ernest Becker Possibility 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… — Ernest Becker Animal Copy Share Image
“Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the… — Ernest Becker Death Copy Share Image
“If the frustrations are not surrounded by anxiety, fear of life, insecure love and support, then the child progresses easily and naturally… — Ernest Becker Autistic Copy Share Image
Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude - even dishonor and betrayal- to real possibility? This may not… — Ernest Becker Accusation Copy Share Image
“doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical… — Ernest Becker Hero Copy Share Image
The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates… — Ernest Becker Art Copy Share Image
“Modern man became psychological because he became isolated from protective collective ideologies. He had to justify himself from within himself.” — Ernest Becker Modern man 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 Dies Copy Share Image
It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never… — Ernest Becker Doom Copy Share Image
“From the child of five to myself is but a step. But from the new-born baby to the child of five is… — Ernest Becker Birth Copy Share Image
“to become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life.” — Ernest Becker Hero 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 Contradiction 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 Calling Copy Share Image
If the love object is divine perfection, then one's own self is elevated by joining one's destiny to it... All our guilt,… — Ernest Becker Destiny 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 Accepting Copy Share Image
“Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an… — Ernest Becker Culture Copy Share Image
“With the truth, one cannot live. To be able to live one needs illusions, not only outer illusions such as art, religion,… — Ernest Becker Art Copy Share Image
“For centuries man lived in the belief that truth was slim and elusive and that once he found it the troubles of… — Ernest Becker Faith Copy Share Image
![“If the partner becomes God he can just as easily become the Devil; the reason is not far to seek. For one thing, one becomes bound to the object in dependency. One needs it for self-justification. . . . [O]ne's self-development is restricted by the object, absorbed by it. It is too narrow a…” quote by Ernest Becker](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/bca/ernest-becker-7036_lose-yourself_if-the-partner-becomes-god-he-can-just-a_336762.jpg)
