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)
Collective effervescence is the source of religious sentiment.
The pathological forms of the division of labor are anomie and forced division.
Morality consists in solidarity with the group.
Science lives by faith in itself.
The family is the prototype of all social groups.
Totemism is the simplest form of religion.
Social currents are forces which escape the individual consciousness.
The conscience collective is the superior power.
Fatalistic suicide occurs under excessive regulation.
The university must be the organ of the state for the diffusion of knowledge.
In a word, society creates morality.
The cult of the individual is the only true religion.
Professional groups are the foundation of social solidarity.
The method of sociology is the same as that of the natural sciences.
Anomie is the deregulation of the passions.
Religion is society worshipping itself.
The social is the natural.
Education is the sociology of the future.
The state is the very organ of social thought.
In living together, men create sentiments and ideas which are common to all.
Contemporaries of Emile Durkheim
Other Sociologys born within 50 years of Emile Durkheim (1858–1917).