22 quotes
Methodological rules are for science what rules of law and custom are for conduct.
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
Solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality.
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it.
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908)
The general conclusion of the book which the reader has before him is that religion is something eminently social.
We must discover the rational substitutes for those religious motives that have, for so long, served as the vehicle for the most essential moral ideas.
Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
As an industrialist, I am free to apply the technical methods of former centuries; but by doing so, I should invite certain ruin.
Kant postulates God, since without this hypothesis morality is unintelligible. We postulate a society specifically distinct from individuals, since otherwise morality has no object and duty no roots.
Sociology and philosophy (1911)
At the moment when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life.
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
When, then, the sociologist undertakes the investigation of some order of social facts, he must endeavour to consider them from an aspect that is independent of their individual manifestations.
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
Jeffrey Eisenach et al (1993)
To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is too condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897)
Every society is a moral society. In certain respects, this character is even more pronounced in organised societies. Because the individual is not sufficient unto himself, it is from society that he receives everything necessary to him, as it is for society that he works.
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.
Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897)
Once the generality of the phenomenon has been established, one can, by showing its utility, confirm the results of the first method. We may, therefore, formulate the three following rules
Men already had ideas on law, morality, the family, the state, and society itself before the advent of social science, for these ideas were necessary conditions of his life
Everybody knows that we like those who resemble us, those who think and feel as we do. But the opposite is no less true. It very often happens that we feel kindly towards those who do not resemble us, precisely because of this lack of resemblance.
The Division of Labor in Society (1893)
The category of class was at first indistinct from the concept of the human group; it is the rhythm of social life which is at the basis of the category of time; the territory occupied by the society furnished the material for the category of space; it is the collective force which was the prototype of the concept of efficient force, an essential element in the category of causality.
A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.