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

This solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality... Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it... when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life.

One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.

By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

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.

Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group.