Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.
Emile DurkheimRead
Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our perception of social reality is influenced by our thoughts and beliefs.
This quote reflects the idea that our understanding of the social world is largely shaped by our internal mental processes. Emile Durkheim suggests that the forces we perceive in society—such as norms, values, and structures—are not inherently objective but are instead constructed through our interpretations and cognitions. In this view, what we encounter in our social environment is filtered through our minds, leading to the conclusion that social realities exist in connection with our perceptions and beliefs.
Themes
Social EnvironmentMindPerceptionRealityInterpretation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a lecture on sociology to highlight the role of perception in social interactions.
More from Emile Durkheim
All quotes →Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.
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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 DurkheimRead
A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
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The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment.
Emile DurkheimRead
A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.
Emile DurkheimRead
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