AtomicQuote

Ernest Becker Quote

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 its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.

Ernest Becker

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 its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.

Tags: existentialism, mental health

Related Quotes

What is the point of our lives? There isn't any. I can't seem to decide how much horror and how much joy lies within that simple truth, but I know it is both of those things at once.

Ashly Lorenzana

What is the point of our lives? There isn't any. I can't seem to decide how much horror and how much joy lies within that simple truth, but I know it is both of those things at once.

Tags: afterlife, destiny, existentialism, experience, fate, horror, joy, life, meaning, pointlessness

Civilization could not exist without tremors of desire and without the counteracting, negation force of disciplined denial. Nor would the gyratory pulsations of a lively civilization exist devoid of t...

Kilroy J. Oldster

Civilization could not exist without tremors of desire and without the counteracting, negation force of disciplined denial. Nor would the gyratory pulsations of a lively civilization exist devoid of t...

Tags: attitude, attitude toward life, attraction, character, civilization, culture and attitude, culture identity, denial, desire, desires

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. ButSisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He tooconcludes that all is well. Thi...

Albert Camus

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. ButSisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He tooconcludes that all is well. Thi...

Tags: absurd, absurdism, camus, existentialism, happiness, the myth of sisyphus

Polarities of the 'authentic' vs. the 'inauthentic' are easily discernible in recreational modes. The criteria of authenticity are not necessarily objective but rather have to do with the rules by whi...

Walker Percy

Polarities of the 'authentic' vs. the 'inauthentic' are easily discernible in recreational modes. The criteria of authenticity are not necessarily objective but rather have to do with the rules by whi...

Tags: existentialism, experience, genuineness, the self

Don't you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you've surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack the swimmer by the thousands, eat him up in a few...

Albert Camus

Don't you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you've surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack the swimmer by the thousands, eat him up in a few...

Tags: absurdism, african, african authors, algerian, existentialism, literature

Sure, people can make you happy, but no one can stop you from being happy.

Jason Daniel Chaplin

Sure, people can make you happy, but no one can stop you from being happy.

Tags: absurdism, existentialism, happiness, jason daniel chaplin, philosophy, surrealism

We have an infinite supply of information and yet we cannot read.

R.F. Georgy

We have an infinite supply of information and yet we cannot read.

Tags: digital age, dostoevsky, existentialism, feyodor dostoevsky, information, notes from the underground, philosophy, progress

Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.

Tags: existential, existentialism, funeral, melancholy, sadness, sartre

Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value.

Tags: existentialism, past and future, time, value

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the t...

Milan Kundera

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the t...

Tags: czech, existentialism, happiness, kitsch, laughter, meaning of life, novel, philosophy
About Ernest Becker

Ernest Becker (September 27, 1924 – March 6, 1974) was an American cultural anthropologist and author of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death.