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 DURKHEIMIt is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
More Emile Durkheim Quotes
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Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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 -
Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
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 -
The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
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 -
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
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.
EMILE DURKHEIM -
Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.
EMILE DURKHEIM