Émile Durkheim Short Quotes

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The first and most fundamental rule is: Consider social facts as things.

Émile Durkheim
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.

Émile Durkheim
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

Émile Durkheim
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.

Émile Durkheim
At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.

Émile Durkheim
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

Émile Durkheim
Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

Émile Durkheim
One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.

Émile Durkheim
Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

Émile Durkheim
To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

Émile Durkheim
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

Émile Durkheim
Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.

Émile Durkheim
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.

Émile Durkheim
It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.

Émile Durkheim
It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.

Émile Durkheim
Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof; it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.

Émile Durkheim
Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

Émile Durkheim
A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

Émile Durkheim
Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.

Émile Durkheim
It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

Émile Durkheim
Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.

Émile Durkheim
Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought.

Émile Durkheim
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.

Émile Durkheim
The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty.

Émile Durkheim
The term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result

Émile Durkheim
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.

Émile Durkheim
Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.

Émile Durkheim
Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.

Émile Durkheim
Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.

Émile Durkheim
Kant postulates God, since without this hypothesis morality is unintelligible. We postulate a society specifically distinct from individuals, since otherwise morality has no object and duty no roots.

Émile Durkheim