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

Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.

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.

If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action thanks to resources at its disposal which, however, are not necessarily due to any social superiority, the second has an unjust advantage over the first at law. In other words, there cannot be rich and poor a birth without there being unjust contracts.

The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.

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

Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.