We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
EMILE DURKHEIMWe do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
EMILE DURKHEIMA monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.
EMILE DURKHEIMBy definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.
EMILE DURKHEIMThe man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.
EMILE DURKHEIMOne does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or – which is the same thing – when his goal is infinity.
EMILE DURKHEIMA 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.
EMILE DURKHEIMIt is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
EMILE DURKHEIMWhen man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
EMILE DURKHEIMMan 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.
EMILE DURKHEIMMan cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.
EMILE DURKHEIMEven one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.
EMILE DURKHEIMMan 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.
EMILE DURKHEIMSocialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
EMILE DURKHEIMOur whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
EMILE DURKHEIMIf religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
EMILE DURKHEIMReligious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
EMILE DURKHEIM