Emile Durkheim Quotes

I come from a specific tradition of sociology, which is urban ethnography.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

I would have liked to have been a professor of sociology.

As I said before, there are often disagreements as to what a particular set of facts mean. That is not at all unusual, and one shouldn't read into it more than is there.

Anyway, that was the germ of the idea and of course... you know this was early days of sociology and whatever, especially on television.

I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.

I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'

Science of Society

Get the facts. Let's not even attempt to solve our problems without first collecting all the facts in an impartial manner.

My wish is to construct a system of sociology on the model of celestial mechanics, physics, and chemistry.

Many of us who read the literature of social science as laymen are conscious of being admitted at a door which bears the watchword "scientific objectivity" and of emerging at another door which looks out upon a variety of projects for changing, renovating, or revolutionizing society. In consequence, we feel the need of a more explicit account of how the student of society passes from facts to values or statements of policy.

To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.

Mankind will possess incalculable advantages and extraordinary control over human behavior when the scientific investigator will be able to subject his fellow men to the same external analysis he would employ for any natural object, and when the human mind will contemplate itself not from within but from without.

One side sticks to the facts, and the other side is close to playing with its poop.

As a lawyer you never speak with emotion. It's about the precise facts.

At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, That nothing with God can be accidental.

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.

Even today few scientists and perhaps even fewer nonscientists realize that science is a method and nothing else.

It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.

Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

The fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.

You don't know what I'm going to say until I say it and that's because I'm only looking at the facts and the evidence.

Political economy has only become a science since it has been confined to the results of inductive investigation.

The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions.