Emile Durkheim Quotes - Page 2

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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.

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Social Pressure, Aim

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.357, Routledge

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• Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but is subject to that of society.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Society, Yoke

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.213, Routledge

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• I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty.

  Emile Durkheim

  Liberty, Economic, Profit

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• At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.

  Emile Durkheim

  Sight, Firsts, Doe

  Emile Durkheim (1973). “Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society”, p.206, University of Chicago Press

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• If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action thanks to resources at its disposal which, however, are not necessarily due to any social superiority, the second has an unjust advantage over the first at law. In other words, there cannot be rich and poor a birth without there being unjust contracts.

  Emile Durkheim

  Order, Law, Class

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• 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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• One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.

  Emile Durkheim

  Goal, Doe, Infinity

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

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• At this point, an urgent question arises: [...] Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being, one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism? Briefly, is the division of labor, at the same time that it is a law of nature, also a moral rule of human conduct; and, if it has this latter character, why and in what degree?

  Emile Durkheim

  Character, Law, Division Of Labor

  "De la division du travail social (The Division of Labor in Society)". Book by Emile Durkheim (p. 41 in 1947 translation of George Simpson), 1893.

  7 Copy quote

• Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.

  Emile Durkheim

  Pain, Cry, Socialism

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Suicide, Sadness, People

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

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• Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.

  Emile Durkheim

  Science, Society, Individual

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• The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Meditation, He Man

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.279, Simon and Schuster

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• Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

  Emile Durkheim

  Religious, Reality, Collectives

  Emile Durkheim (2000). “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life”, p.12, Library of Alexandria

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Suicide, Suicidal, Giving

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.277, Simon and Schuster

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Historical, Analysis

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Passion, Men, Meditation

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.279, Simon and Schuster

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• The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment.

  Emile Durkheim

  Art, Political, Sound

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.211, Simon and Schuster

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Environment, Relation, Autonomy

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• Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

  Emile Durkheim

  Cheerful, Morality, Found

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.333, Routledge

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• One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.

  Emile Durkheim

  Names, Long, Doe

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.243, Routledge

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• Although our moral conscience is a part of our consciousness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes itself heard only to give us orders and establish prohibitions, we cannot recognize our own voices; the very tone in which it speaks to us warns us that it expresses something within us that is not of ourselves.

  Emile Durkheim

  Order, Voice, Giving

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Life, Sad, Taken

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.333, Routledge

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• Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.

  Emile Durkheim

  Suicide, Spring, Suicidal

  Suicide: A Study in Sociology bk. 3, ch. 3 (1897) (translation by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson)

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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.

  Emile Durkheim

  Feelings, Needs, Variables

  John A. Spaulding, George Simpson, Emile Durkheim (2010). “Suicide”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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