Emile Durkheim Quotes

I'm a big fan of community, and I think independence is over-rated.

President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?

Each man is worth more than the whole of humanity, nor will it do to sacrifice each to all save in so far as all sacrifice themselves to each.

There is no such thing as society…There are individuals, men and women, and there are families.

It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities . . . interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible. . . .

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.

It is well to be independent also well not to be neutral.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

I have only two rules which I regard as principles of conduct. The first is: Have no rules. The second is: Be independent of the opinion of others.

We are like snails, each stuck to his own leaf.

Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.

The important is not what you believe but how you behave.

Look at nature, work independently, and solve your own problems.

Me, myself and I. That's all I got in the end.

They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

I've always been very independent. Even in relationships, I'm focused on the quality of my life and not enmeshing myself so much with somebody else's experience. But I think there's incredible value in being married.

Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.

The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

I always had a very strong sense of independence.

It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong.

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.