“never has there been an age in which so little knowledge is securely possessed, so little a part of the common understanding.” — Ernest Becker Knowledge 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
“He has no doubts, there is nothing you can say to sway him, to give him hope or trust. He is a… — Ernest Becker Doubt 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
What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance. — Ernest Becker Extinction 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 Burden 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
“Man is an animal who has to live in a lie in order to live at all.” — Ernest Becker Human nature Copy Share Image
“freedom is dangerous. If you follow it too willingly it threatens to pull you into the air; if you give it up… — Ernest Becker Freedom Copy Share Image
“Man is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping,… — Ernest Becker Nature 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 Creation 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
“Man cuts out for himself a manageable world: he throws himself into action uncritically, unthinkingly. He accepts the cultural programming that turns… — Ernest Becker Programming Copy Share Image
The key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared meanings. There is something… — Ernest Becker Common 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 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 Body Copy Share Image
“We might say that both the artist and the neurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it… — Ernest Becker Art 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 Psychology 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
“to become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life.” — Ernest Becker Life 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 greatest cause of evil included all human motives in one giant paradox. Good and bad were so inextricably mixed that we… — Ernest Becker Causes Copy Share Image
the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith — Ernest Becker Analysis Copy Share Image
