Rene Girard Quotes

I'm a product of a fragmented world.

Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order.

You see, as Americans we're not defined by class, and we will never be told our place. What makes our nation exceptional is that anyone, from any background, can climb the highest of heights.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else.

At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.

Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tries, the Bores and Bored.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

Freedom breeds inequality.

The Republicans always do a good job of dividing and conquering. They do a really good job of making black folks, poor white folks, and Hispanics not like each other.

I don't like the way I see society going.

There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.

I can quickly go to a place where I worry about society spiralling out of control.

I think you have a lot of rich and Conservative people who control our country who are racist and their views trickle down through things like tabloid papers.

The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality.

The financial elite do not need special laws for themselves. This is one nation and there is one criminal law.

The world is not equal, unfortunately.

We have a wider political and economic system in which ancient, landed power still carries immense weight. There is nothing some landowners would like more than to set the police on those who dare to venture into their vast estates.

I don't think equality is intrinsically valuable, meaning in and of itself. I'm not against inequality... if Bill Gates gets another hundred million dollars, it's no skin off my nose.

There is no organic process where you can take a diverse community like America and then distill it down to it only looks monolithic without having some kind of inorganic interplay going on that created that outcome.

I feel that discrimination and hierarchy is something that people have to face constantly.

The gruesomeness of 'Death Line' was an absolute necessity for me to bring up the political content of the film. I wanted to show how devastating class distinction could be.