When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
EMILE DURKHEIMAn 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.
More Emile Durkheim Quotes
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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
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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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
It 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 DURKHEIM -
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 of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
The 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 DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or – which is the same thing – when his goal is infinity.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
EMILE DURKHEIM