It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.

Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

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.

If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action thanks to resources at its disposal which, however, are not necessarily due to any social superiority, the second has an unjust advantage over the first at law. In other words, there cannot be rich and poor a birth without there being unjust contracts.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.