Émile Durkheim

The collective conscience is the strongest when it is least differentiated.

The individual is not an isolated being, but a part of a larger whole.

The social environment is the true cause of social phenomena.

The sacred is that which society sets apart and protects.

The profane is that which is common and ordinary.

The social fact is a category of facts which present very special characteristics: it consists of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him.

The function of crime is to affirm and reinforce the collective conscience.

The individual is not free to choose his own morality; he is constrained by the morality of his society.

Sociology is not a branch of philosophy, nor of psychology, but a distinct science.

The collective consciousness is not a mere sum of individual consciousnesses, but a distinct reality.