Rene Girard Quotes

“Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did anybody ever seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since it's lodgement is in the heart and not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it.”
― herman melville, Billy Budd, Sailor

“We didn't stop burning witches because we invented science; we invented science because we stopped burning witches.”
― René Girard

“Society’s members are psychically pressured into defining ‘true’ and ‘right’ based not on personal experience or direct gnosis (inner knowing), but on what the creators of social discourse put forward as ‘true’ and ‘right’—in other words, what to believe in—even in the absence of genuine logic or compelling evidence.

This situation leads—almost inevitably, it would seem—to the creation of a certain kind of top-down, pyramidal structure that controls society, culture and, given enough free rein, eventually the world itself.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“The world we see ‘out there’ is a reflection of our cleverly molded shared consciousness, our collective belief installed through manipulation of our mimetic desire, not a given ‘thing’ that can’t be changed. This means, as in the adage, that we can heal the world only if we heal ourselves.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality