Emile Durkheim Quotes

I have seen the day, when, if a man made himself ridiculous, the world would laugh at him. But now, everything that is mean, disgusting, and absurd, pleases them but so much the better!

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

Los Angeles, I don't like that town. Too decadent, and it's slimy.

I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.

In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

... a moral skunk .... [who has] debauched America ...

… a sewer with all the depravity of the human race.

Satan is busily at work in our crowded cities.

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

… everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.

When the religion is subjected to restriction, evil, crime, corruption and pornography become spread everywhere

If cleverness has often been a sign of decadence throughout history, the attempt to be too clever by half is an even more reliable marker of cultural decline.

With 'Nostromo', Joseph Conrad said that he had wanted to write a novel about the degradation of an idea. That's what we wanted to show in the case of Dustin Hoffman's character, Bernstein.

What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.

What does not wasting time change! The age of our parents, worse than that of our grandsires, has brought us forth more impious still, and we shall produce a more vicious progeny.

We make no apology then for raising our voices loud to a world that is ripening in sin the lord has said,” Say nothing but repentance unto this generation; The adversary is subtle, cunning, he knows that he cannot induce good men and women immediately to do major evils so he moves slyly, whispering half truths until he has his intended victims following him finally he clamps his chains upon them and fetters them tight, and then he laughs at their discomfiture and their misery.

For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

Around the child bend all the threeSweet Graces: Faith, Hope, Charity.Around the man bend other faces;Pride, Envy, Malice, are his Graces.

Pleasures bring effeminacy, and effeminacy foreruns ruin; such conquests, without blood or sweat, sufficiently do revenge themselves upon their intemperate conquerors.

Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer.

Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.