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The God of Christianity isn’t the violent God of archaic religion, but the non-violent God who willingly becomes a victim in order to free us from our violence.

— René Girard The Scandal of Christianity (2007)

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More quotes by René Girard

Few people want to be saints nowadays, but everybody is trying to lose weight.

Anorexia and Mimetic Desire (2008)

The ultimate meaning of desire is death.

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

Violence and the Sacred (1977)

There is always an attempt to move away from the Cross, that is, to perpetuate man’s misrecognition of his violence and protect his pride from the revelation. Without the Cross, there is no revelation of the fundamental injustice of the scapegoat mechanism, which is the founder of human culture, with all its repercussions in our relationships with each other.

The Scandal of Christianity (2007)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: René Girard (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.