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)
Sociology must explain the facts of moral life.
Contemporaries of Emile Durkheim
Other Sociologys born within 50 years of Emile Durkheim (1858–1917).