Lukasz Gre

“Hedonism is not heroism for most men. The pagans in the ancient world did not realize that and so lost out to the “despicable” creed of Judeo-Christianity. Modern men equally do not realize it, and so they sell their souls to consumer capitalism or consumer communism or replace their souls—as Rank said—with psychology. Psychotherapy is such a growing vogue today because people want to know why they are unhappy in hedonism and look for the faults within themselves. Unrepression has become the only religion after Freud—as Philip Rieff so well argued in a recent book; evidently he did not realize that his argument was an updating and expansion of exactly what Rank had maintained about the historical role of psychology.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Holy terror is rather fear of oneself, fear of oneself and in the world. It is also fear of punishment. Without this necessary fear, charisma is not possible. To live without this high fear is to be terror oneself, a monster. And yet to be monstrous has become our ambition, for it is our ambition to live without fear. All holy terror is gone. The interdicts have no power. This is the real death of God and of our own humanity. It is out of sheer terror that charisma develops. We live in terror, but never in holy terror.”
― Philip Rieff, Charisma: The Gift of Grace, and How It Has Been Taken Away from Us

“If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.”
― Alfred North Whitehead

“It seems that life, in order to maintain itself, must revolt every so often against man's ceaseless attempts to master its irrational forces with his mind.”
― Otto Rank, Beyond Psychology