The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior to them. This false difference is already th… - René Girard

The revolutionaries thought they would be destroying vanity when they destroyed the privileges of the noble. But vanity is like a virulent cancer that spreads in a more serious form throughout the body just when one things it has been removed. Who is there left to imitate after the tyrant has been removed. Henceforth men shall copy each other; idolatry of one person is replaced by hatred of a hundred thousand rivals. In Balzac's opinion, too, there is no other god but envy for the modern crowd whose greed is no longer stemmed and held within acceptable limits by the monarch. Men will become gods for each other.

Silence is the only conduct truly befitting a solipsist, the only one, however, that he cannot bring himself to adopt.

Jesus reproaches the Pharisees for an older version of the same ploy when he sees them build tombs for the prophets their fathers killed. The spectacular demonstrations of piety toward the victims of our predecessors frequently conceal a wish to justify ourselves at their expense. If we had lived in the time of our fathers, the Pharisees say, we would not have joined them in spilling the blood of the prophets. The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior
to them. This false difference is already the mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is reenacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself brings about the reenactment.