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

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

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

For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy.

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

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.