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

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

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

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.

Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

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.