There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life;… — 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 environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but… — Emile Durkheim Copy Share
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
