Ernest Becker Quotes

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

Ernest Becker

Quotes to Explore

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Carl Sagan
- Survival
- Rule
- Extinction
For the complete extinction of the state, complete Communism is necessary.

Vladimir Lenin
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

William Shakespeare
- God
- Sports
- Boys
A man of the utmost insignificance.

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
If climate change drove the megafauna extinct, then this presents yet another reason to worry about what we are doing to global temperatures. If, on the other hand, people were to blame—and it seems increasingly likely that they were—then the import is almost more disturbing. It would mean that the current extinction event began all the way back in the middle of the last ice age. It would mean that man was a killer—to use the term of art an “overkiller”—pretty much right from the start.

Elizabeth Kolbert
If warming were held to a minimum, the team estimated that between 22 and 31 percent of the species would be “committed to extinction” by 2050. If warming were to reach what was at that point considered a likely maximum—a figure that now looks too low—by the middle of this century, between 38 and 52 percent of the species would be fated to disappear.

Elizabeth Kolbert
- Team
- Species
- Warming