Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.
To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.
A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.
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.
It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
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 Christian conceives of his abode on Earth in no more delightful colors than the Jainist sectarian. He sees in it only a time of sad trial; he also thinks that his true country is not of this world.
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.
The first and most fundamental rule is: Consider social facts as things.
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.