Best 70 quotes of Emile Durkheim on MyQuotes

There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.

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.

The term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result

This solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality... Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it... when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life.

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

What history teaches us is that man does not change arbitrarily; he does not transform himself at will on hearing the voices of inspired prophets. The reason is that all change, in colliding with the inherited institutions of the past, is inevitably hard and laborious; consequently it only takes place in response to the demands of necessity. For change to be brought about it is not enough that it should be seen as desirable; it must be the product of changes within the whole network of diverse casual relationships which then determine the situation of man.

When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.

When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.

When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

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.

Crime brings together honest men and concentrates them.

En général, les hommes n'aspirent à s'instruire que dans la mesure où ils sont affranchis du joug de la tradition; car tant que celle-ci est maîtresse des intelligences, elle suffit à tout et ne tolère pas facilement de puissance rivale.

It is said that we do not make the guilty party suffer for the sake of suffering; it is nonetheless true that we find it right that he should suffer.

It seems very strange that one must turn back, and be transported to the very beginnings of history, in order to arrive at an understanding of humanity as it is at present.

Quant aux événements privés qui passent généralement pour être les causes prochaines du suicide, ils n'ont d'autre action que celle que leur prêtent les dispositions morales de la victime, écho de l'état moral de la société.

We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

we should not say that an act offends the common consciousness because it is criminal, but that it is criminal because it offends the common consciousness

When there is no other aim but to outstrip constantly the point arrived at, how painful to be thrown back!...Since imagination is hungry for novelty, and ungoverned, it gropes at random

When this ultimate crisis comes... when there is no way out - that is the very moment when we explode from within and the totally other emerges: the sudden surfacing of a strength, a security of unknown origin, welling up from beyond reason, rational expectation, and hope.