Quotes from book
Suicide

Name: Suicide
Author: Émile Durkheim

Suicide is an 1897 book written by French sociologist Émile Durkheim. It was the first methodological study of a social fact in the context of society. It is ostensibly a case study of suicide, a publication unique for its time that provided an example of what the sociological monograph should look like.

“It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)

“To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is too condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)

“It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)

“A passion for the infinite is daily presented as a sign of moral distinction, when in fact it can only occur in disturbed minds which accord the status of a norm to the very disturbance from which they are suffering.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)