Emile Durkheim Quotes

Quotes about:

• Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Morality, Social

  148 Copy quote

• Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group.

  Emile Durkheim

  Reality, Thinking, Groups

  209 Copy quote

• We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

  Emile Durkheim

  Crime

  Emile Durkheim (2014). “The Division of Labor in Society”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

  174 Copy quote

• Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

  Emile Durkheim

  Order, Movement, Generations

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.372, Simon and Schuster

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• When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Mirrors, Soul

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Groups, Causes

  Emile Durkheim (2014). “The Division of Labor in Society”, p.311, Simon and Schuster

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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

  Mind, Environment, Social

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Strong, Ignorance, Risk

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.245, Routledge

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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

  Ideas, Soul, Essentials

  Emile Durkheim (1973). “Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society”, p.191, University of Chicago Press

  91 Copy quote

• When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

  Emile Durkheim

  Law, Unnecessary, Sufficient

  Attributed to Emile Durkheim in "Readings in Renewing American Civilization" edited by Jeffrey A. Eisenach and Albert Stephen Hanser (p. 54), 1993.

  163 Copy quote

• When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.

  Emile Durkheim

  Law, Moral, Unnecessary

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• There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.

  Emile Durkheim

  Organization, People, Different

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.362, Simon and Schuster

  121 Copy quote

• The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.

  Emile Durkheim

  Fundamentals, Firsts, Facts

  "The Rules of Sociological Method: And Selected Texts on Sociology and Its Method".

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• What history teaches us is that man does not change arbitrarily; he does not transform himself at will on hearing the voices of inspired prophets. The reason is that all change, in colliding with the inherited institutions of the past, is inevitably hard and laborious; consequently it only takes place in response to the demands of necessity. For change to be brought about it is not enough that it should be seen as desirable; it must be the product of changes within the whole network of diverse casual relationships which then determine the situation of man.

  Emile Durkheim

  Past, Men, Voice

  120 Copy quote

• 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

  Practice, Community, Religion

  Emile Durkheim, Steven Lukes (2014). “The Rules of Sociological Method: And Selected Texts on Sociology and Its Method”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  133 Copy quote

• Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual. There is no principle for which we have received more criticism; but none is more fundamental. Indubitably for sociology to be possible, it must above all have an object all its own. It must take cognizance of a reality which is not in the domain of other sciences... there can be no sociology unless societies exist, and that societies cannot exist if there are only individuals.

  Emile Durkheim

  Reality, Practice, Criticism

  130 Copy quote

• To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

  Emile Durkheim

  Goal, Unattainable, Definitions

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.248, Simon and Schuster

  78 Copy quote

• Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

  Emile Durkheim

  Division, Social, Source

  Emile Durkheim (1973). “Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society”, p.110, University of Chicago Press

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Sad, Sorrow, World

  14 Copy quote

• It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Taught, Difficult

  49 Copy quote

• Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

  Emile Durkheim

  Dream, Reality, Imagination

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.216, Routledge

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Average, Creative, Belief

  71 Copy quote

• A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.

  Emile Durkheim

  Independent, Exercise, Acting

  "The Rules of Sociological Method". Book by Emile Durkheim (p. 10), 1895.

  63 Copy quote

• From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

  Emile Durkheim

  Dream, Wall, Reality

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.216, Routledge

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• This solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality... Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it... when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life.

  Emile Durkheim

  Exercise, Personality, Definitions

  "De la division du travail social (The Division of Labor in Society)". Book by Emile Durkheim (translation of George Simpson), 1893.

  49 Copy quote

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