“Science cannot describe individuals, but only types. If human societies cannot be classified, they must remain inaccessible to scientific description.”

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

The term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result

Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

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.

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 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.

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

When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.

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.

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

Maniacal suicide. -This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

Melancholy suicide. – This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.

The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.

I was once described by one of my critics as an aesthetic fascist.

A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.

An organizing principal in fact, that describes how humans came to be.

Civilians’ is a term I love. It’s what Elizabeth Hurley used to describe people who weren’t on TV.

Premie’ re approximation: j’e cris pour de truire, en les de crivant avec pre cision, des monstres nocturnes qui menacent d’envahir ma vie e veille e. First general point: I write to destroy, by describing exactly the nocturnal monsters that threaten to invade my waking life.

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.

Certainly we do not need quantum mechanics for macroscopic objects, which are well described by classical physics.

The development of quantum mechanics early in the twentieth century obliged physicists to change radically the concepts they used to describe the world.