Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and consist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.

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

Although our moral conscience is a part of our consciousness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes itself heard only to give us orders and establish prohibitions, we cannot recognize our own voices; the very tone in which it speaks to us warns us that it expresses something within us that is not of ourselves.

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

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

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

Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.