The Worm at the Core Quotes

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. —VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Speak, Memory: A Memoir”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“We are, from a purely biological perspective, simply breathing pieces of defecating meat, no more significant or enduring than a lizard or a potato.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Although we typically take our cultural worldview for granted, it is actually a fragile human construction that people spend great energy creating, maintaining, and defending. Since we’re constantly on the brink of realizing that our existence is precarious, we cling to our culture’s governmental, educational, and religious institutions and rituals to buttress our view of human life as uniquely significant and eternal.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Our longing to transcend death inflames violence toward each other.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“We know, if only vaguely and inchoately, that our finest and most memorable experiences may never, and indeed, ultimately will never, happen again. That is why we cherish them so.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Living up to cultural roles and values—whether we are called “doctor,” “lawyer,” “architect,” “artist,” or “beloved mother”—embeds us safely in a symbolic reality in which our identity helps us transcend the limits of our fleeting biological existence. Self-esteem is thus the foundation of psychological fortitude for us all.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“We can reflect on the fact that each of us is, in Otto Rank’s lovely words, a “temporal representative”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“This realization threatens to put us in a persistent state of existential fear.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Through diligent efforts to become familiar with the prospect (and the inevitable fact) of dying, one ideally becomes psychologically fortified to the point where, as Montaigne put it, “I am at all hours as well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he shall come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before.” Thus encouraged, Montaigne can agree with Lucretius’ counsel: “Why not depart from life as a sated guest from a feast?”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“From the child of five to myself is but a step,” Leo Tolstoy observed, “but from the new-born baby to the child of five is an appalling distance.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“As you recall from chapter 1, people who are reminded of death typically defend their worldviews by becoming especially harsh toward critics of their culture. But when Americans who are naturally high in self-esteem or who are given a self-esteem boost are reminded of their own death, they don’t react negatively toward those who express anti-American sentiments. Self-esteem takes the edge off our hostile reactions to people and ideas that conflict with our beliefs and values. With it, we face things that would otherwise upset us with far more equanimity.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“A complementary death-denying strategy is the belief in a personal and personified savior. From a child’s perspective, parents are gigantic and seemingly all-powerful beings with a knack for showing up whenever bodily or emotional needs arise. It’s natural, therefore, for a young mind to also believe in stories about omnipotent beings interceding in matters of life and death.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“In the United States, thirteen-year-old Jewish boys often mark the transition to adulthood with a bar mitzvah, involving a rather elaborate ceremony that includes singing a passage from the ancient Torah, followed by a celebration of dancing to hip-hop music and gorging on dessert. Sambian boys in Papua New Guinea mark the same transition by participating in the Flute Ceremony, which includes playing ritual flutes and performing fellatio on older boys and elders of their tribe. Imagine if the Sambian and American Jewish boy suddenly changed places. We’d witness how a momentous source of pride to members of one culture could be a totally meaningless or humiliating experience to members of another, because the behaviors and achievements that confer self-esteem do so only to the extent that we embrace a cultural worldview that deems them worthy.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“If you can afford the finer things in life, people pay attention to you. You feel special. Your self-esteem, that critical bulwark against the fear of death, rises.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Take all the cultural trappings away and we are all just generic creatures barraged by a continuous stream of sensations, emotions, and events, buffeted by occasional waves of existential dread, until those experiences abruptly end. But in a world infused with meaning, we are so much more than that. Still, it is not enough to be equipped with our scheme of things. We humans feel fully secure only if we consider ourselves valuable contributors to that world we believe in. To this vital striving for self-esteem we now turn. CHAPTER 3 Self-esteem:”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“We can reflect on the fact that each of us is, in Otto Rank’s lovely words, a “temporal representative of the cosmic primal force.” We are all directly descended from, and consequently related to, the first living organism, as well as to every earth-dwelling creature that has ever been alive or will live in the future.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Because cultural conceptions of reality keep a lid on mortal dread, acknowledging the legitimacy of beliefs contrary to our own unleashes the very terror those beliefs serve to quell. So we must parry the threat by derogating and dehumanizing those with alternative views of life, by forcing them to adopt our beliefs and co-opting aspects of their cultures into our own, or by obliterating them entirely.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“According to terror management theory, the combination of a basic biological inclination toward self-preservation with sophisticated cognitive capacities renders us humans aware of our perpetual vulnerabilities and inevitable mortality, which gives rise to potentially paralyzing terror. Cultural worldviews and self-esteem help manage this terror by convincing us that we are special beings with souls and identities that will persist, literally and/or symbolically, long past our own physical death. We are thus pervasively preoccupied with maintaining confidence in our cultural scheme of things and satisfying the standards of value associated with it. But preserving faith in our cultural worldviews and self-esteem becomes challenging when we encounter others with different beliefs. Sinister complications almost inevitably ensue.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Psychologically fortified by the sense of protection and immortality that ritual, art, myth, and religion provided, our ancestors were able to take full advantage of their sophisticated mental abilities.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“The same cognitive capacities that enabled our ancestors to be self-aware—not to mention to live in large groups, imagine and create sophisticated tools, and plan and execute elaborate hunting and foraging forays—also brought the potentially paralyzing realization of death to mind. And paralysis was a recipe for extinction; so early humans, instead of succumbing to existential despair, placed themselves in the center of an extraordinary, transcendent, and eternal universe.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Although “in their developed forms, phantasythinking and reality-thinking are distinct mental processes,” wrote psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs, “reality-thinking cannot operate without concurrent and supporting…phantasies.” We might not have calculus without grave goods, or dentistry without the tooth fairy.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Many evolutionary theorists view art and religion as superfluous by-products of other cognitive adaptations that have no adaptive significance or enduring value. This view is simply wrong. These products of human ingenuity and imagination were essential for early humans to cope with a uniquely human problem: the awareness of death. The striving for immortality—universal to all cultures—forestalls terror and despair.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Research has borne out the fact that we strive for higher self-esteem in the face of mortality. After thinking about their death, Israeli soldiers whose self-esteem was strongly tied to their driving ability drove faster on a simulator. Elsewhere, those who based their self-worth on physical strength generated a stronger handgrip after they thought about death; those who based their self-worth on physical fitness reported increased intentions to exercise; and those who based their self-worth on beauty reported greater concern about their appearance.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Children also use all kinds of mental tricks to dodge death, starting by simply declining to think about it. Three-year-old Jane, in her budding awareness of death, worriedly asked her mother whether dead people opened their eyes again, whether they spoke, ate, and wore clothes. “Suddenly, in the middle of all these questions and tears,” her mother reported, “she said, ‘Now I will go on with my tea.’ ” Similarly, after his mother told five-year-old Richard that he wouldn’t die for a long time, the little boy smiled and said, “That’s all right. I’ve been worried, and now I can get happy.” Then he said he would like to dream about “going shopping and buying things.” These diversionary tactics are strikingly similar to what happens when adults think about themselves dying. They react by trying to stop thinking about death and distracting themselves with mundane concerns. Research finds that after a reminder of death, adults also search for “don’t worry, be happy” thoughts. And it is quite common for adults to react to thoughts of death by turning to comfort foods and luxury goods: “Let’s do lunch and go shopping!”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“prime example of a central principle of human life: we combat mortality by striving for significance.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“Accordingly, self-esteem is the feeling that one is a valuable participant in a meaningful universe. This feeling of personal significance is what keeps our deepest fears at bay.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“We pay a heavy price for being self-conscious.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

“we humans procure psychological equanimity by being valued in the eyes of higher powers: at first our parents, and, as we mature, the culture at large.”
― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life