Best Emile Durkheim Quotes
- It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs… Belief
- When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable. Inspirational
- A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times,… Absurd
- 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… Among
- If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action… Abstain
- The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All… All
- Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons. Been
- It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand. Complex
- If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion. All
- Although our moral conscience is a part of our consciousness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes… Cannot Recognize
- Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned. Abandoned
- 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… Cloth
- Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular. Circular
- By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings. Beings
- When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable. Inspirational
- 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… Abandon
- Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain. Cry
- Melancholy suicide. —This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds… Attract
- 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… Conceptions
- A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices… Adhere
- 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… Character
- A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations… All
- That men have an interest in knowing the world which surrounds them, and consequently that their reflection should have been applied to it at an… Admit
- A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy… All
- Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are… Action