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

• In life, a lot of great ideas sound insane or absurd at first.

  

  Nathan Fielder
  • Life
  • Great
  • 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

• You used to be able to just call people. You didn't have to be on someone's calendar to have a phone conversation. The telephone was an important and valuable domain of communication, both for casual, friendly chats and for professional exchanges of ideas and information. But no more.

  

  Dan Pallotta
  • People
  • Important
  • Ideas

• 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

• You don't have to subject yourself to the sweep and rigor of Bourdieu's book 'Distinction' to feel how thoroughly a lower-calorie version of its ideas has been absorbed into the cultural bloodstream.

  

  Garth Risk Hallberg
  • Book
  • Ideas
  • Yourself

• 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

• Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.

  

  Blaise Pascal
  • Knowledge
  • Ignorance
  • Birth

• I was still too weak to understand his chess ideas at that time but I remember being covered in smoke.

  

  Alexei Shirov
  • Ideas
  • Understand
  • Chess

• Children know something that most people have forgotten.

  

  Keith Haring
  • People
  • Children
  • Knows

• You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'

  

  Harlan Coben
  • People
  • Mystery
  • Puzzle

• Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.

  

  Norman Vincent Peale
  • Mind
  • Happiness
  • Habit

• 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