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.

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.

Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.

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

There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.

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

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.