We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it. Emile Durkheim More Quotes by Emile Durkheim More Quotes From Emile Durkheim It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand. Emile Durkheim difficulttaughtmen 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 autonomyenvironmentrelation 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 politicalsoundart A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church. Emile Durkheim practiceideasthinking Melancholy suicide. - This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract. Emile Durkheim sadnesssuicidepeople Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities. Emile Durkheim collectivesreligiousreality A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations. Emile Durkheim independentactingexercise 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. Emile Durkheim lawclassorder 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 sadtakenlife Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but is subject to that of society. Emile Durkheim yokesocietymen 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. Emile Durkheim variablesfeelingsneeds 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 Emile Durkheim victimsuicidenegative Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them. Emile Durkheim cheerfulmoralityfound Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description. Emile Durkheim individualsocietyscience Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized. Emile Durkheim religiouslossmen 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 sacreddefinitionsbreak The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. Emile Durkheim he-manmeditationmen It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed. Emile Durkheim analysishistoricalmen 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 namesdoelong The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things. Emile Durkheim fundamentalsfactsfirsts
