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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

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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
Causes
Withstand
Faith
Shaken
Must
Unable
Shock
Deeply
Proof
Uprooted
Argument
Dialectic
Already
Dialectics

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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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A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.
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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.
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Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.
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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.
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Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
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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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When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
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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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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.
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At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
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The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
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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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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.
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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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Each new generation is reared by its predecessor the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.
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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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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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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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