Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.
Ernest BeckerRead
All power is in essence power to deny mortality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the quest for power often stems from a desire to overcome the inevitability of death.
Ernest Becker's quote reflects the idea that the pursuit of power is fundamentally linked to our struggle against mortality. In essence, he argues that individuals seek power not only for control over their lives and others but also as a means to confront and deny the reality of their own mortality, highlighting the existential fears that drive human behavior. This perspective invites a deeper contemplation on the motivations behind our ambitions and the lengths to which we go to achieve a sense of permanence in a transient world.
Themes
PowerMortalityExistenceControlFear
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming fears, this quote can illustrate the drive behind human ambition.
More from Ernest Becker
All quotes βThe 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.
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When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem
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If the love object is divine perfection, then one's own self is elevated by joining one's destiny to it... All our guilt, fear, and even our mortality itself can be purged in a perfect consummation with perfection itself.
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Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.
Ernest BeckerRead
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 of pretending not to be mad.
Ernest BeckerRead
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XXVIII "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a rock, a mighty fortress; "Often have I been to it, "Even to its highest tower, "From whence the world looks black." "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a breath, a wind, "A shadow, a phantom; "Long have I pursued it, "But never have I touched "The hem of its garment." And I believed the second traveller; For truth was to me A breath, a wind, A shadow, a phantom, And never had I touched The hem of its garment.
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