French - Sociologist | April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917
Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.
Emile Durkheim
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To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
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Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
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If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
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It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
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It is inadmissible that systems of ideas like religions, which have held so considerable a place in history, and to which, in all times, men have come to receive the energy which they must have to live, should be made up of a tissue of illusions.
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A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
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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.
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Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
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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.
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The individual can maintain himself in a society definitely organized only through possessing an equally definite mental and moral constitution. This is what the neuropath lacks. His state of disturbance causes him to be constantly taken by surprise by circumstances.
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A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.
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