“The heroic individual does not evade the debt of death but accepts the loan of life.”

Otto Rank, “Art and Artist” (1932)

“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; ​

but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

Ernest Becker, “The Denial of Death” (1973)

“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. 

That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.”

Carl Gustav Jung, "Aion; Contributions to the Symbolism of the Self" (1951)

“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it.”

Elias Canetti

“Crowds and Power” (“Masse und Macht”), 1960

“They are in themselves soulless beings who represent nothing but the thoughts and intuitions of their Lord.

Angels who fall, then are exclusively “bad” angels. These release the well known effect of “inflation”, which we can also observe nowadays in the megalomania of dictators: the angels beget with men a race of giants which ends by threatening to devour mankind, as is told in the book of Enoch.”

Carl Gustav Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (1962)

"The human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are protected from:​ the fear of life and the fear of death…

He has to repress the realization that he is an animal, a creature of the earth, because this would undo his whole cultural world view.”

Ernest Becker, “The Denial of Death” (1973)

“An earthly ruler can now unleash destruction surpassing all the plagues with which God visited the Egyptians. Man has stolen his own God. He has seized and taken for himself his armory of doom and terror.

The most audacious dreams of those earlier rulers in whom the desire to survive had become a passion and a vice, seem meagre today. Seen in retrospect, history appears innocent and almost comfortable. Everything lasted for so long then and in an unexplored world there was so little to be destroyed. Today there is only a moment between decision and effect, and, measured by our potentialities, Genghis Kan, Tamerlane and Hitler seem pitiful amateurs.” 

Elias Canetti, “Crowds and Power, Epilogue” (1960)

“What is new about this age is that man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations.

He experiences the terror of the world and his own powerlessness. He asks radical questions.

Face to face with the void, he strives for liberation and redemption.”

​

Karl Jaspers, "The Origin and Goal of History" (1949)