Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by René Girard

Quote by René Girard

“No culture exists within which everyone does not feel "different" from others and does not consider such "differences" to be legitimate and necessary. Far from being radical and progressive, the current glorification of difference is merely the abstract expression of an attitude common to all cultures. There exists in every individual a tendency to think of himself not only as different from others but as extremely different, because every culture entertains this feeling of difference among the individuals who compose it.”

Quote by René Girard

Book:The Scapegoat
Create image

Work

The Scapegoat

This novel explores the complex psychological dynamics of a man who discovers he has been living under a false identity, leading to a gripping narrative about the nature of truth and the consequences of deception. more

Author

René Girard

Browse famous quotes and profile details for René Girard. more

You May Also Like

“There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for what ought to be. And for my present purpose I specially insist on this abstract independence. If I am to discuss what is wrong, one of the first things that are wrong is this: the deep and silent modern assumption that past things have become impossible. There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, "You can't put the clock back." The simple and obvious answer is "You can." A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed.”

PoliticsSocietyTraditionCatholicCatholicism
Author:G.K. Chesterton
Create image

“Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, halfway down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow, which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat.”

SocietyDrunkenness
Book:A Room of One’s Own
Create image