Rene Girard

If you scapegoat someone, it's a third party that will be aware of it. It won't be you. Because you will believe…

— Rene Girard

“There is no culture without a tomb and no tomb without a culture; in the end the tomb is the first and…

— René Girard

The true Resurrection is based not on the mythical lie of the guilty victim who deserves to die, but on the rectification…

— Rene Girard

“The good son imitates the father with such passion that father and son become each other's chief stumbling block - a situation…

— René Girard

Individualism is a formidable lie.

— Rene Girard

Instead of blaming victimization on the victims, the Gospels blame it on the victimizers. What the myths systematically hide, the Bible reveals.

— Rene Girard

Every time I could escape from Sunday church, I did, from the age of twelve until about thirty.

— Rene Girard

I do not read many periodicals, and I have little or no contact with progressive Christians, so I don't really know what…

— Rene Girard

“The revolutionaries thought they would be destroying vanity when they destroyed the privileges of the noble. But vanity is like a virulent…

— René Girard

I think that historical processes have meaning and that we have to accept this - or else face utter despair.

— Rene Girard

“So long as globalization was slow in coming, everyone hoped and prayed that it would come soon. The unity of the world's…

— René Girard

“Nietzsche is a marvelous antidote to all fundamentally anti-Biblical efforts to turn mythology into a kind of Bible, and that is the…

— René Girard

“Even in the most closed cultures men believe that they are free and open to the universal; their differential character makes the…

— René Girard

Each person must ask what his relationship is to the scapegoat. I am not aware of my own, and I am persuaded…

— Rene Girard

“We must renounce the gambit of "good" and "bad" - even in its inverted form. We must acknowledge that misapprehensions abound, that…

— René Girard

I am fundamentally an anthropologist and a rationalist. What I say is that human societies are very different from what specialists call…

— Rene Girard

Salvation lies in imitating Christ, in other words, in imitating the 'withdrawal relationship' that links him with his Father... To listen to…

— Rene Girard

More than ever, I am convinced that history has meaning - and that its meaning is terrifying.

— Rene Girard

“Instead of reorganizing the demoniac, rearranging it a bit, like a psychoanalyst, you do away with it entirely.”

— René Girard

“In the long run, the pessimism of reactionaries never proves to be justified, but neither does the optimism of revolutionaries. The expansion…

— René Girard

The myth-making machine is the mimetic contagion that disappears behind the myth it generates.

— Rene Girard

When the whole world is globalized, you're going to be able to set fire to the whole thing with a single match.

— Rene Girard

“When the father is no longer an overbearing patriarch the son looks everywhere for the law - and finds no lawgiver.”

— René Girard

“Myths are the retrospective transfiguration of sacrificial crises, the reinterpretation of those crises in light of the cultural order that has arisen…

— René Girard

“Why does Jesus regard the Father and himself as the best model for all humans? Because neither the Father nor the Son…

— René Girard