Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
EMILE DURKHEIMMen have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.
More Emile Durkheim Quotes
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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.
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A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.
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It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
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One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or – which is the same thing – when his goal is infinity.
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Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.
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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 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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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.
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When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
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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.
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Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
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The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty.
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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.
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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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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