Mimetic Contagion Quotes & Sayings

I kind of thought actually that Trevor was gone completely mental when he called up here a few weeks ago. Like, why would he not text or email or Facebook? What's with all the reality, I thought. Does he not know he's a million times cooler in virtual form? — Donal Ryan

I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections. — William Congreve

The innovator is not an opponent of the old, but a proponent of the new. — Lyle E. Schaller

It has all happened so quickly, but it's exciting, I just wanna get back to playing football you know. — Michael Sam

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness. — William Golding

The resistance to the mimetic contagion prevents the myth from taking shape. The conclusion in the light of the Gospels is inescapable: myths are the voice of communities that unanimously surrender to the mimetic contagion of victimization. — Rene Girard

First truck called a 'pick-up' was an International Harvester S in 1921. — L. M. Boyd

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak. — Baruch Spinoza

Our souls are but leaves in a storm, and only the gods know where we will come to rest. — David Gemmell

Baboons are very wise animals," Bast said.
"Agh!" Khufu picked his nose, then turned his Technicolor bum our direction. He threw his friends the ball. They began to fight over it, showing one another their fangs and slapping their heads.
"Wise?" I asked. — Rick Riordan

Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology. — Rene Girard

She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off. — P.G. Wodehouse

There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that God causes the mob to come together against Jesus. Violent contagion is enough. Those responsible for the Passion are the human participants them-selves, incapable of resisting the violent contagion that affects them all when a mimetic snowballing1 comes within their range, or rather when they come within the range of this snowballing and are swept along by it. We don't have to invoke the supernatural to explicate this. The war of all against all that transforms communities into a war of all against one that gathers and unifies them is not limited solely to the case of Jesus. — Rene Girard

A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development. — Thomas M. Disch

Jesus transcends the Law, but in the Law's own sense and direction. He does this by appealing to the most humane aspect of the legal prescription, the aspect most foreign to the contagion of violence, which is the obligation of the two accusers to throw the first two stones. The Law deprives the accusers of a mimetic model. Once — Rene Girard

What preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way? — Vincent Van Gogh

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well. — Antony Sher