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The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment.

From Emile Durkheim

Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.

From Emile Durkheim

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

From Emile Durkheim

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

From Emile Durkheim

Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.

From Emile Durkheim

Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof; it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.

From Emile Durkheim

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

From Emile Durkheim

It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

From Emile Durkheim

That men have an interest in knowing the world which surrounds them, and consequently that their reflection should have been applied to it at an early date, is something that everyone will readily admit.

From Emile Durkheim

There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent.

From Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim

Notable Quotes

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