When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIMScience cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
More Emile Durkheim Quotes
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The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
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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.
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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, 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.
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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, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.
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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 which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.
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The Christian conceives of his abode on Earth in no more delightful colors than the Jainist sectarian. He sees in it only a time of sad trial; he also thinks that his true country is not of this world.
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Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
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We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
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Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
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Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
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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.
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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
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To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
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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 from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.
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At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
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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 which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.
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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.
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If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
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The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
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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 a mysterious order from on high, etc.
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When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
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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.
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It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.
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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.
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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.
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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.
EMILE DURKHEIM