Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.

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

When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.

If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.

A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.

Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.

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.