Quote

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

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
Doe
Completely
Infinity
Without
Name
Increasingly
Feels
Existence
Contemplation
Long
Names
Emptiness
Bestows
Pleasure
Vain
Ceasing
Nature
Satisfied
Absorbed
Cannot
Remain
Inclination
Change
Exist
Attracted

More quotes by Emile Durkheim

Image
There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life for this the individual is incompetent.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
Emile Durkheim
Image
Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
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
When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
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
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
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
Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
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
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
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
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
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
The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
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