Skip to content

Émile Durkheim Quotes

1858–1917 France

Émile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) was a French sociologist whose contributions were instrumental in the formation of sociology, anthropology and religious studies. His work and editorship of the first journal of sociology (L'Année Sociologique) helped establish sociology within the academy as an accepted social science.

France
Academics
Anthropologists
Business theorists
Philosophers

Also known as: Durkheim, Emile Durkheim

Random Émile Durkheim quote

22 quotes

Imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister of exemplary individuals. Crimes, properly so called, will there be unknown; but faults which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousnesses. If, then, this society has the power to judge and punish, it will define these acts as criminal and will treat them as such.

It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.

Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Émile Durkheim (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.