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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.

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
Feeling
External
Bottomless
Force
Depend
Regulatory
Individual
Thus
Irrespective
Feelings
Limits
Variable
Nature
Capacity
Insatiable
Human
Necessary
Variables
Humans
Depends
Abyss
Needs
Alone
Unlimited
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Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
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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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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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Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
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There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
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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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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.
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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.
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The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
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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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Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
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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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