The individual can maintain himself in a society definitely organized only through possessing an equally definite mental and moral constitution. This is… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description. — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again,… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is,… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter,… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss. — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character. — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
The liberal professions, and in a wider sense the well-to-do classes, are certainly those with the liveliest taste for knowledge and the most active… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion. — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it. — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity. — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs.… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain, one bestows on it the name… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share Image
