Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

- Emile Durkheim

There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily…

- Emile Durkheim

If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.

- Emile Durkheim

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed…

- Emile Durkheim

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

- Emile Durkheim

This solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality... Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscie…

- Emile Durkheim

When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.

- Emile Durkheim

Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.

- Emile Durkheim

A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting whi…

- Emile Durkheim