It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.

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

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

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 the collective or creative consciousness.

There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.

Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.