“Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.”

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

The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty.

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.

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

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.

Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof; it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.

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

Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.

One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or – which is the same thing – when his goal is infinity.

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.

Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.

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

Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.

Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.

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.

Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

When I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, ‘I’ve been gypped,’ or, ‘He welshed on the deal.’

Not all comedy clubs or situations are ideal, especially when you’re first coming up and I think that’s good for you. Eventually, you get to express your real personality.

I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.

The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.

The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.

We were fundamentally the same. They expressed their anger more willingly. We developed the capacity to internalize our anger, using a nonviolent discipline.

Sedentary people are apt to have sluggish minds. A sluggish mind is apt to be reflected in flabbiness of body and in a dullness of expression that invites no interest and gets none.