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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

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Emile Durkheim
Age: 59 †
Born: 1858
Born: January 1
Died: 1917
Died: January 1
Anthropologist
Historian Of Religion
Philosopher
Professor
Sociologist
Troyes
Aube France
Emile Durkheim
Must
Predecessors
Improve
Latter
Generation
Predecessor
Therefore
Reared
Generations
Successor
Movement
Circular
Order
Successors

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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.
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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
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When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
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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.
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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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If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
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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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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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We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
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The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
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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.
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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.
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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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Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
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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.
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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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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.
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When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
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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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