A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

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.

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

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

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.

That men have an interest in knowing the world which surrounds them, and consequently that their reflection should have been applied to it at an early date, is something that everyone will readily admit.

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