Emile Durkheim Quotes

64 quotes in 1058 categories

• A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of…
• 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…
• Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity.…
• Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The…
• The first and most fundamental rule is: Consider social facts as things.
• Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently,…
• Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general…
• 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…
• 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.
• The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
• For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves…
• Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
• There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not…
• Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
• From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is…
• One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of…
• We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
• Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
• While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships,…
• 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…

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