Rene Girard Quotes

Organizations in conflict quickly become like one another.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

The hardest job is getting personalities to mesh.

In principle, every social situation involves strategic interaction among the participants.

Every combination of two or more human beings has both a useful aspect and a political aspect.

We get along really well, but TV and film aren't reality. We're best friends, but we do have our fights!

This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

We're not losing the peace.

Aggression is the most common behavior used by many organizations, a nearly invisible medium that influences all decisions and actions.

Every diplomatic breakthrough is preceded by a crisis, but not every crisis leads to a breakthrough.

Cooperation requires a certain degree of trust between states. The threshold of trust required for cooperation depends on a set of variables including a state's relative power and costs of conflict…. conflict between trustworthy states is possible, when we see conflict it is a sign that one or both of the states are likely to be untrustworthy.

I think we might well ask: How does one destroy his enemy by becoming like him?

All is left in perpetual strife until God decrees a solution

There is no such thing as fighting on the winning side: one fights to find out which is the winning side.

The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.

Stop the fighting and find the middle ground.

The term negotiation implies compromise; painful concessions on the part of both parties.

Conflicts have to be resolved. That is the responsibility of leadership. And globalization is the biggest conflict today.

There is no such thing as a conflict that cannot be ended.

It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.

When men understand what each other mean, they see for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless.

Today, difficulties that a mere two or three years ago would have passed for private matters – for conflicts between students and teachers, workers and employers, or marital partners, for conflicts between individual – now claim political significance and ask to be justified in political terms. Psychology seems to turn to politics…

The good people of this world are very far from being satisfied with each other & my arms are the best peacemakers.

Sometimes you have two egos—one on each side—and as you go up the escalation ladder, one of them may do something just to appear strong.