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Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.

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
Exist
Environment
Force
Social
Seems
Whole
Forces
Mind
Minds
Really
Filled

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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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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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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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Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
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The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
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When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
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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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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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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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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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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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Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
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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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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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Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.
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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 no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
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