Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

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

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.

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.

Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.