If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action thanks to resources at its disposal which, however, are not necessarily due to any social superiority, the second has an unjust advantage over the first at law. In other words, there cannot be rich and poor a birth without there being unjust contracts.
Emile DurkheimEven one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.
Emile DurkheimMan is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.
Emile DurkheimMan could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.
Emile DurkheimFor a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy.
Emile Durkheim