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"22 Emile Durkheim Quotes & Sayings

      French     /     View profile
Born: 15 April 1858. Died: 15 November 1917 | Sociologist |

When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

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

New generation Predecessor Improve
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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.

Socialism Science Miniature Pain
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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.

Great comfort Man Readily renounced Life
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Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.

Men have Religion Science Methodical comparisons
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Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

Religious representations Collective realities
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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; for this the individual is incompetent.

Collective Individual humor People Cheerfulness
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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 determined modes of action.

Religious phenomena Fundamental categories Beliefs Rites
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Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.

Man seek Cohesion Religious society
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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 with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.

Society Members United Think
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Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.

Social environment Forces Really exist Own minds
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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.

Faith Uprooted Dialectic Shaken
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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 in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.

A person Single subject Distinguished
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When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.

When man The mirror Lose His soul
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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 infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.

One cannot Absorbed Emptiness Increasingly attracted
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We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
Condemn it Crime Because
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Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.

Irrespective Any external Force Capacity
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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.

The totality Belief Sentiments Average members
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Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

Too cheerful Morality Appropriate Decadent
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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.

Man Live Impervious Sadness
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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.

An act Defined Actor Identical system
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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. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.

Man Moral life Society Solidarity
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Emile Durkheim Quotes & Sayings