Quote

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.

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
Superiority
Extent
Profit
Physical
Liberty
Economic
Free
Detriment
Others
Forbidden

More quotes by Emile Durkheim

Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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.
Emile Durkheim
Image
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
Image
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
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
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.
Emile Durkheim
Image
To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
Emile Durkheim
Image
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
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
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
At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.
Emile Durkheim
Image
A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
Emile Durkheim
Image
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
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
Image
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
Emile Durkheim