Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.

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

The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.

I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty.

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.

Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.