Quotes by Émile Durkheim

Melancholy suicide. —This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract;

Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.

When there is no other aim but to outstrip constantly the point arrived at, how painful to be thrown back!...Since imagination is hungry for novelty, and ungoverned, it gropes at random

We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

Crime brings together honest men and concentrates them.

Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.

One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.

When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.

It seems very strange that one must turn back, and be transported to the very beginnings of history, in order to arrive at an understanding of humanity as it is at present.