Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.

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

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.

At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.

Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof; it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.

Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual. There is no principle for which we have received more criticism; but none is more fundamental. Indubitably for sociology to be possible, it must above all have an object all its own. It must take cognizance of a reality which is not in the domain of other sciences... there can be no sociology unless societies exist, and that societies cannot exist if there are only individuals.

Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.