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

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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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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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To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
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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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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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Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
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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 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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Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
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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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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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When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
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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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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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When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.
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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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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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The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.
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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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