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

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
Basic
Consider
Rule
Social
Facts
Firsts
First
Things
Fundamentals

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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.
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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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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.
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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
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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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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 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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At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
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While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them.
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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
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Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
Emile Durkheim
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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
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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
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There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
Emile Durkheim
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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
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We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
Emile Durkheim
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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
Emile Durkheim
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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.
Emile Durkheim
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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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Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
Emile Durkheim