Quote

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

Emile Durkheim

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Facts
Firsts
First
Things
Fundamentals
Basic
Consider
Rule
Social

More quotes by Emile Durkheim

Image
Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
Emile Durkheim
Image
To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
Emile Durkheim
Image
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
Emile Durkheim
Image
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
Emile Durkheim
Image
Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.
Emile Durkheim
Image
It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
The Christian conceives of his abode on Earth in no more delightful colors than the Jainist sectarian. He sees in it only a time of sad trial he also thinks that his true country is not of this world.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
Emile Durkheim