While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them.

An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.

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

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

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

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.

It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.