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Emile Durkheim Quotes

Sociologist

Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist born on April 15, 1858, and died on November 15, 1917, is considered the father of sociology. His work profoundly influenced the understanding of social structure, social functions, and collective consciousness.

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All Men Social Ifs Doe Facts Individual Moral Whole Human Nature Firsts

Famous Emile Durkheim Quotes

“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”

Knows Term Results Cases Produce Negative Victim Suicide

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

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

States Goal Oneself Definitions Pursue Unhappiness Perpetual Unattainable

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“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.”

Needs Humans Feelings Individual Force Human Nature Depends Limits Capacity Unlimited Abyss Variables Insatiable

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.”

Men Whole Passion Meditation He Man Activity Mere Appearance Introspection Surroundings Insensible

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.”

Mind Enough Strong Doubt Risk Ignorance Bears Weight Questioning Skepticism Strong Enough Implying

Book:Suicide: A Study in Sociology

Source: Suicide: A Study in Sociology

“It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.”

Mean Doe Facts Seems Belief Loses Sadness Prove Currents Disappear Remarkable Civilized Pessimism Destined

Book:Suicide: A Study in Sociology

Source: Suicide: A Study in Sociology

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

Law Moral Sufficient Unnecessary Insufficient

Author:Emile Durkheim

“Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.”

Dream Reality Seems Imagination Comparison Abandoned Valueless Imagination Reality Beyond Reality

Book:Suicide: A Study in Sociology

Source: Suicide: A Study in Sociology

“Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.”

World Doe Whole Sadness Products Sorrow Sad Mere Contemplation Joys And Sorrows Sadness Of Life Sadness And Sorrow

Author:Emile Durkheim

“Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.”

Order Generations Movement Latter New Generation Predecessors Successors

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“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.”

Break Sacred Definitions Continuity Profane

Author:Emile Durkheim

“A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.”

Persons Use Desire Language Example Drink Healthy Sick Stealing Absurd Flaws Mentality Unreasonable Abusive Sick Person

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.”

Men Life Is Turns Class Comfort Luxury Harsh

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action thanks to resources at its disposal which, however, are not necessarily due to any social superiority, the second has an unjust advantage over the first at law. In other words, there cannot be rich and poor a birth without there being unjust contracts.”

Ifs Firsts Action Law Order Social Poor Class Rich Birth Resources Advantage Dues Thanks Contracts Superiority Unjust Obliged Rich And Poor Classes Of Society

Author:Emile Durkheim

“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.”

Art Political Life Is Social Sound Roles Environment Morality Demand Built Cosmic Organs Exhaustion Social Environment

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.”

Men Long Has Beens Notion Comparison Obliged Methodical

Author:Emile Durkheim

“It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.”

Men Difficult Taught Complexes

Author:Emile Durkheim

“If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.”

Ifs Ideas Soul Given Birth Essentials

Book:Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society

Source: Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society

“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.”

Giving Feels Order Speak Voice Consciousness Moral Heard Conscience Tone Prohibition Moral Conscience

Author:Emile Durkheim

About the Author

Born: April 15, 1858
Died: November 15, 1917
Known for: Sociologist
Quotes: 69

Books & Sources

SuicideRelated source material

Suicide: A Study in SociologyRelated source material

Emile Durkheim on Morality and SocietyRelated source material

Durkheim on Religion: A Selection of Readings with Bibliographies and Introductory RemarksRelated source material

The Division of Labor in SocietyRelated source material

The Rules of Sociological Method: And Selected Texts on Sociology and its MethodRelated source material

The Elementary Forms of the Religious LifeRelated source material

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