“[‘Knowing’]...is an evasion of the courage to be; it prevents the absorption of maximum meaninglessness into oneself”
     Ernest Becker

“...most of us- by the time we leave childhood- have repressed our vision of the primary miraculousness of creation. We have closed it off, changed it, and no longer perceive the world as it is to raw experience. ...The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world...”
     Ernest Becker

“[He] talked about the terror of the world, the feeling of overwhelming awe, wonder, and fear in the face of creation- the miracle of it, the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum of each thing, of the fact that there are things at all.”
     Ernest Becker

“Man’s very insides- his self- are foreign to him. He doesn't know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange.”
     Ernest Becker

Ernest Becker quotes from THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas