Existential Psychology- Ernst Becker

"[People] cannot endure [their] own littleness unless [they] can translate it into meaningfulness on the
largest possible level."
~ Ernest Becker, 1973, The Denial of Death, p. 196

"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, 1973, The Denial of Death, p. 20

". . . the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith..."
~ Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, 1973, p. 68


"We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's
condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad.
~ Ernest Becker, 1973, The Denial of Death, p. 29

"Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals..."
~ Ernest Becker, 1973, The Denial of Death, p. 204