Emile Durkheim
French founder of sociology who studied social facts, suicide, and the division of labor to explain societal integration.
Most quoted
"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."
— from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912
"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 common consciousness."
— from The Division of Labor in Society, 1893
"Religion is a system of ideas by means of which individuals imagine the society of which they are members and the obscure yet intimate relations which they have with it."
— from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912
All quotes by Emile Durkheim (101)
The division of labor is not the result of deliberate planning, but a spontaneous adaptation to the conditions of existence.
Crime is a normal phenomenon; it is inevitable in any society.
Education is the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet mature.
The function of the State is to define the conditions under which the rights of individuals can be exercised.
Collective representations are the result of an immense cooperation, which stretches out not only into space but into time as well.
The individual submits to society and accomplishes the function assigned to him only because he feels that he is an integral part of it.
Social life is a system of actions and reactions which condition one another.
The more a society is unified, the more it feels itself as a moral entity.
Egoistic suicide results from man's no longer finding a basis for existence in life.
Religion is the collective way of thinking and feeling of a society.
The soul is the totemic principle itself, the source of the spiritual life.
In the midst of action, we are ignorant of the ends at which our action is directed.
Socialism is no more an evil than is the division of labor.
The state of anomie is impossible wherever organs solidly attached to the whole are in sufficient number and efficiently perform their functions.
To become conscious of one's self is to become conscious of society.
The individual is a product of society, not its cause.
Mechanical solidarity is based on resemblance, organic on difference.
The sacred is the profane set apart and forbidden.
Society creates the individual; it is the individual who creates society.
Altruistic suicide stems from excessive integration.
Contemporaries of Emile Durkheim
Other Sociologys born within 50 years of Emile Durkheim (1858–1917).