Quotes About Conflict

In a truly global world, the renunciation of violent reprisal is bound to become, in a more and more obvious way, the indispensable condition of our survival.

Les mythes débutent presque toujours par un état de désordre extrême.

When men no longer live in harmony with one another, the sun still shines and the rain falls, but the fields are less well tended, the harvests less abundant.

The good son imitates the father with such passion that father and son become each other's chief stumbling block - a situation the indifferent son more easily avoids.

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.

The commandment that prohibits desiring the goods of one's neighbor attempts to resolve the number one problem of every human community: internal violence.

Moralists advise us all to avoid violence, of course, but only insofar as this is possible. They authorize us, at least tacitly, to reply to obvious provocations by the measured counterviolence that I described earlier, and which seems to us always justified.

He thought against Napoleon, in both senses of the word. See how fruitful resentment can be, and how it can make one

I maintain that passion and desire are never authentic in the Heideggerean sense. They do not emerge from the depths of our being; we always borrow them from others. Far from seeing conflict as a sign of mastery, as Heidegger does, we must see it as exactly the opposite, a confirmation of the mimetic nature of our desires.

2. "Mimetic doubles" refers to the situation in which rivals become so obsessed with each other that they mirror each other's emotions and actions. The doubles are alike but they mistakenly see a great difference between them. Mimetic doubles are quite dangerous to one another and to others and can be quite self-destructive. —Trans.

Imitation becomes intensified at the heart of the hostility, but the rivals do all they can to conceal from each other and from themselves the cause of this intensification. Unfortunately, concealment doesn't work. In imitating my rival's desire I give him the impression that he has good reasons to desire what he desires, to possess what he possesses, and so the intensity of his desire keeps increasing.

The mimetic nature of desire accounts for the fragility of human relations. Our social sciences should give due consideration to a phenomenon that must be considered normal, but they persist in seeing conflict as something accidental, and consequently so unforeseeable that researchers cannot and must not take it into account in their study of culture.

If individuals are naturally inclined to desire what their neighbors possess, or to desire what their neighbors even simply desire, this means that rivalry exists at the very heart of human social relations.

Markus Müller, "Interview with René Girard," Anthropoetics 2, no. 1 (June 1996): 3–5. 2

Our unending discords are the ransom of our freedom.

La razón de ser esencial de la guerra, es hacer cesar un desorden y restablecer un orden. Es la unificación de la multiplicidad, con los medios que pertenecen al mundo de la propia multiplicidad. Es únicamente en este aspecto como la guerra puede considerarse legítima.

There is a growing sentiment in America today that animals, too, have rights and that we collectively should afford them, at the very least, more respect and consideration as the sentient, autonomous beings they clearly are. Of course, this flies in the face of Western civilization's stated assumption of man's dominion over the beasts. The way we resolve this conflict in our culture, or fail to, has much to do with who we are, who we will become, and the legacy we leave for generations to come.

don't know why you feel you have the right to treat me disrespectfully and, frankly, I don't care. I've put up with it long enough, and I need you to stop treating me this way." ("I" phrase)

When confronting someone, refrain from using the words always or never. When you say to someone: "You always…" or "You never…," the other person is going to focus more on that one word

You don't want your opening statement to sound like an attack the other person's character, so always begin with an "I" phrase:

Conflict is one of the most difficult situations we face because it thrusts us out of our comfort zone.

I'm sorry if I seem overly sensitive." "I'm sorry if I misunderstood your intent." "I'm sorry that we need to have this conversation." "I apologize if I misunderstood what happened." "I regret that I have to bring this up." "Please forgive me for feeling this way.

Let's go somewhere in private and try to resolve this." "Let's talk this over and find a suitable compromise." "I'd like to hear how you saw the situation so that I better understand.

Vince replied: "If you meant that as a joke, I now have a better understanding of where you were coming from. (understanding) And, my understanding is that your idea of joking is to call someone out in front of other people." Mark shrugged and laughed uneasily.