The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker
What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal?
Ernest Becker
The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous.
Ernest Becker
It means to know that one is food for worms
Ernest Becker
Man is literally split in two:
Ernest Becker
he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty,
Ernest Becker
and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.
Ernest Becker
The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation;
Ernest Becker
but it is life itself which awakens it,
Ernest Becker
and so we must shrink from being fully alive.
Ernest Becker
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
The Denial of Death
Collect this idea from Ernest Becker in the app.
