Quotes from Émile Durkheim

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

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.

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

Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.

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.

One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.

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.

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

Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.

Crime brings together honest men and concentrates them.

It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political and moral beliefs that control our actions.

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.

The most barbarous and the most fantastic rites and the strangest myths translate some human need, some aspect of life, either individual or social.

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.

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.

Hence we are the victims of an illusion which leads us to believe we have ourselves produced what has been imposed upon us externally.

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

Liberty is the daughter of authority properly understood. For to be free is not to do what one pleases; it is to be the master of oneself, it is to know how to act within reason and to do one's duty.

Things perceived as real become real in their consequences.

Religion is in a word the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself.

Social man...is the masterpiece of existence.

Just as reflection disappears to the extent that thought and action take the form of automatic habits, it awakes only when accepted habits become disorganized.

Methodological rules are for science what rules of law and custom are for conduct.

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