Quote

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

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
Perpetual
Definition
Definitions
Pursue
Oneself
Goal
Unattainable
State
Condemn
States
Unhappiness

More quotes by 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
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.
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
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
Emile Durkheim
Image
It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
Emile Durkheim
Image
The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
Emile Durkheim
Image
The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
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
When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
Emile Durkheim
Image
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
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
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
Image
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
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
Image
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
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
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
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