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 ob…

- Ernest Becker

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

- Ernest Becker

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 themsel…

- Ernest Becker

People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves

- Ernest Becker

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 terro…

- Ernest Becker

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; b…

- Ernest Becker

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

- Ernest Becker

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 fa…

- Ernest Becker

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 …

- Ernest Becker