Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

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

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.

A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.

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

Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but is subject to that of society.

Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.