Emile Durkheim Quotes

I talk about religion because it's one of the ways human beings find power and belonging. Religion is more than just that - I think faith traditions give us ways to talk about experiences of the numinous, too - but power and belonging are a big part of it.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

If you want young people to take right and wrong seriously, you must put them in the presence of people who take right and wrong seriously.

There's so much benevolence on helping your fellow person. And the morality that helped build our country is based on the values that are found in the Bible. And as we look at problems, maybe we're getting away from those values. And in my little small way, I want to encourage people to get back into those values.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

The rigid volunteer rules of right and wrong in sports are second only to religious faith in moral training.

We see systematically taught in our high schools today that kids not have to hear their parents, that they can make their own rules, and not even live by what their parents, so there's no guidance from the parents. And there's a concerted effort why - government must be their God.

All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by.

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.

Power is the test. Some, once they have it, are content to buy the show of liking, and punish those who withhold it; then you have a despot. But some keep a true eye for how they seem to others, and care about it, which holds them back from much mischief.

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.

When we think of a criminal, we imagine someone with criminal motives. And when we look at Eichmann, he doesn't actually have any criminal motives. Not what is usually understood by "criminal motives." He wanted to go along with the rest. He wanted to say "we," and going-along-with-the-rest and wanting-to-say-we like this were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible. The Hitlers, after all, really aren't the ones who are typical in this kind of situation--they'd be powerless without the support of others.

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.

I have never taken the high road, but I tell other people to 'cause then there's more room for me on the low road.

Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions.

It was time to pull my moral socks up and behave myself.

I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble.

But Father has also taught him: Treat a man as if he had a fine reputation to protect, and he will usually endeavor to deserve it.

If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.

Basically there are two types of people in the world: people who are confident because they know they have the ability to create, and then people who have been demoralised, who have no confidence in themselves because they have been told they have no creative ability, but must just take orders. The Establishment likes people who take no responsibility and cannot respect themselves.