"What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow ...












We are gods with anuses.

More Ernest Becker quotes
"Today we are living the grotesque spectacle of the poisoningof the earth by the nineteenth-century hero system of unrestrainedmaterial production. Thi...
"We called one's lifestyle a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself...
"Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals.
"Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.
"The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.
"Too much possibility is the attempt by the person to overvalue the powers of the symbolic self. It reflects the attempt to exaggerate one half of the ...
"the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith