Ernest Becker Quotes

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.

Ernest Becker

• Ideas
• Conscious
• Worms
• Monstrous

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Quotes to Explore

• What gets people into trouble with records now is that they want to build something up without substantial musical ideas. Without that as a foundation, you can add all the layers of sound you want - it's still going to sound like a mess.

  

  Walter Becker Steely Dan
  • People
  • Up
  • Ideas

• I believe that communal admiration of individuals is healthy for society. It facilitates, in one way, the base of our universal standard, morals, but also publicly espouses the virtue of certain practices that are kind of like 'inherently good' in some kind of ideas of what the good is.

  

  Jack Gleeson
  • Good
  • Believe
  • Society

• Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.

  

  Adam Grant
  • People
  • Up
  • Reality

• I have new ideas every day, and I always want to take on new challenges.

  

  Dane Cook
  • Day
  • Ideas
  • Challenges

• Many U.S. organizations believe that I am being barred from the country not because of my actions but because of my ideas. The conclusion seems inescapable.

  

  Tariq Ramadan
  • Ideas
  • Actions
  • Conclusion

• Spiritual life can certainly follow the pattern one sees in the fake martial arts, with most teachers making nebulous and magical claims that never get tested, while their students derange themselves with weird ideas, empty rituals, and other affectations.

  

  Sam Harris
  • Life
  • Ideas
  • Spiritual

• My company Independent Ideas worked with Gucci on a special edition Fiat 500.

  

  Lapo Elkann
  • Ideas
  • Independent
  • Company

• Travelling is really great for giving you tons of ideas, but it's really hard to actually record anything on the road.

  

  Washed Out
  • Great
  • Giving
  • Ideas

• I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.

  

  Zaha Hadid
  • Life
  • Politics
  • Conscious

• The American people... want change. They want big ideas, big reform.

  

  Rahm Emanuel
  • People
  • American
  • Change

• The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Time
  • Mind
  • Ideas

• Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

  

  Karl Marx
  • Freedom
  • Blind
  • Conscious

• No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

  

  F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Ideas
  • Idea
  • Born

• It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.

  

  Wangari Maathai
  • Important
  • Ideas
  • Make A Difference

• I don't think that the Left has a monopoly on bad ideas. I don't think the Right has a monopoly on good ideas.

  

  J. D. Vance
  • Good
  • Bad
  • Think

• Actually, 'Wayne's World 2' I kind of liked. I think 'Wayne's World 2' does have some creative things in it, some ideas in it.

  

  Adam McKay
  • World
  • Ideas
  • Creative

• I think that what we were doing with the live musical version of 'Shrek' was taking the ideas and the structure of the movie and not necessarily reinventing it but reimagining it. It is a very different medium to perform.

  

  Daniel Breaker
  • Different
  • Live
  • Movie

• Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

  

  Napoleon Hill
  • Light
  • Eyes
  • Ideas

• [About Jews] Sheer egotism compels us to the purest love of mankind as a whole.... Our hearts are like a sponge, receptive to all the newest humanitarian ideas; and our sympathy goes out to all the unfortunate, all the oppressed.

  

  I. L. Peretz
  • Heart
  • Ideas
  • Sympathy

• It was weird to be in a movie that's very clearly a period piece like Killing Reagan, but that's about a time that's within my own memory. That's really weird. And conscious memory, not just vague.

  

  Cynthia Nixon
  • Time
  • Movie
  • Weird

• I love the idea of spies in love. How would it work between two people who were so programmed to lie and be suspicious, who have a whole life based on pretence?

  

  Tony Gilroy
  • Life
  • Ideas
  • Lying

• What I went through in 1976, it's the same today: It's about all the pressure that you feel, the anxiety, the family, and everything that surrounds the Games, and then getting there knowing this is your big chance, and you're able to come through. It's such a satisfying thing.

  

  Caitlyn Jenner
  • Family
  • Today
  • Anxiety

• What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.

  

  Ernest Becker
  • Ideas
  • Conscious
  • Worms