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

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

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

We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.

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

Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

Although our moral conscience is a part of our consciousness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes itself heard only to give us orders and establish prohibitions, we cannot recognize our own voices; the very tone in which it speaks to us warns us that it expresses something within us that is not of ourselves.