Emile Durkheim Quotes

Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.

Deviants are sacrificed to increase group solidarity

I've never been one to tear the social fabric.

A society is not a market. It is a political community.

The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.

We had said, it was either all of us or none of us.

If, in the name of liberty, we allow individuals to act in a way that damages the wellbeing of the whole, it will inevitably mean the breakdown of mutuality, thereby changing the very nature of our society.

Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.

A free economy and strong communities honor the dignity of every person, rewarding effort with justice, promoting upward mobility, and building solidarity among citizens.

Canadians have this weird way about them where we really stick together.

Third World countries feel that the liberal view of the world and way of life is at odds with their deepest aspirations and self-conceptions. As they understand it, liberalism breaks up the community, undermines the shared body of ideas and values, places the isolated individual above the community, encourages the ethos and ethic of aggressive self-assertion, rejects traditional wisdom and common sense in the name of scientific reason, and weakens the spirit of mutual accommodation and adjustment.

Since the state is a community of human beings it is as truly subject to the moral law as any private society.

For traditional societies … the collective, the group, is more important than the individual, and empowering the individual is equated with dividing the society.

Society is held together by trust.

A great aggregation of men, sane of mind and warm of heart, creates a moral consciousness which is called a nation

The object of Socialism is not to render the individual capable of living on his personal resources. That is the theory of radical individualism. Its object is to create in him a greater and greater sense of his dependence upon the state, and, at the same time, to inculcate in him the conviction that he is a part of it and that he has a duty and responsibility toward the state; and that only in so far as he fulfills this duty can he benefit by the advantages of a complete personal and social life.

The coalition of conscience

Morality is not merely different in different communities. Its level is not the same for all the component groups within the same community.

I have no confidence in the system of isolation. It does not answer in social life for individuals, nor in politics for nations. Man is a social animal.

The Canadians kind of look out for each other a little bit.

The unit of effectiveness of education is not the individual but the group. An individual's moral values are primarily important for society as they contribute to a moral social climate, not as they induce particular pieces of behavior.

There is power in organization. There is power in a community. People have always wanted to destroy communities.

Morality is very important. We have to be together.