"An unslakable thirst is a perpetually renewed source of suffering.”

"One does not advance if one is not walking towards a goal or, which is the same thing, when the goal towards which one is proceeding is infinitely far away."

"Since society to a large extent makes the individual, it makes him to the same degree in its own image. So the material that it needs will not fail it, because it has, so to speak, prepared it with its own hands."

"If the individual gives way to the slightest adversity, it is because the state of society has made him an easy prey for suicide."

"However individualized a person may be, there is always something collective that remains, which is the feeling of depression and melancholy that arises from this exaggerated individualism. When one has nothing else to share, one participates through sadness."

"Individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to be sick without their being affected. Its suffering inevitably becomes theirs. Because it is the whole, the harm that it feels is communicated to the parts of which it is made."

"There is a collective mood, as there is an individual mood, that inclines nations to sadness or merriment and makes them see things in cheerful or sombre colors."

"The more we feel detached from [society], the more we also detach ourselves from this life of which it is at once the source and the goal. Why these rules of morality, the precepts of law, .... the dogmas that impede us, if there is not outside us some being whom they serve and to whom we belong?"

"So let those who look with anxiety and sadness on the collapse of old beliefs ... refrain from accusing knowledge and science of an evil which they have not caused, but which on the contrary they are seeking to cure! Beware of treating them as the enemy! (1/2)

"Learning is not sought as a means to destroy accepted ideas, but because they have already started to collapse. ... It is not dialectical proofs that uproot faith; faith must have been profoundly shaken by other causes for it not to withstand the shock of argument."

"When mankind, after taking its [Catholic] faith ready-made from tradition, demands the right to make this faith for itself, it is not because of the intrinsic appeal of free inquiry — [in fact] this brings with it as many sorrows as it does joys — but because mankind now needs this freedom. (1/2)

"Every kind of suicide is only the exaggerated or deviated form of a virtue."

"Now political freedom is a means, not an end... If it does not serve some end which goes beyond itself, it is not simply useless; it becomes dangerous. It is a battle weapon; if those who wield it do not know how to use it in fruitful struggles, they soon end by turning it against themselves."

"Today, the urgent task which must come before all others is to save our moral patrimony; once it is secure, we will see that it prospers. Let the common danger at least shake us from our torpor and give us back a taste for action!"

"Men of my generation recall how great our enthusiasm was when, twenty years ago, we finally saw the fall of the last barriers which restrained our restlessness. But alas Disenchantment quickly followed. For we soon had to admit that we did not know what to do with this hard-won freedom."

"Today, a wave of sadness and discouragement has swept over society; tomorrow, on the contrary, a breath of joyful confidence will raise our spirits. For a time, the whole group is pulled in the direction of individualism, then another period arrives and philanthropic social aspirations take over."

"Since each of us incarnates something of humanity, each individual consciousness contains something divine and thus finds itself marked with a character which renders it sacred and inviolable to others. Therein lies all individualism; and that is what makes it a necessary doctrine.”

"Individualism ... is the glorification not of the self but of the individual in general. It springs not from egoism but from sympathy for all that is human, a broader pity for all sufferings, for all human miseries, a more ardent need to combat them and mitigate them, a greater thirst for justice."

"In the same town ... occupations can coexist without being forced into a position where they harm one another, for they are pursuing different objectives. The soldier seeks military glory, the priest moral authority, the statesman power, the industrialist wealth, the scientist professional fame.”

"We should not say that an act offends the common consciousness because it is criminal, but that it is criminal because it offends that consciousness. We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it."

"We use the term 'crime' to designate any act which, regardless of degree, provokes against the perpetrator the characteristic reaction known as punishment."

"The only power that can serve to moderate individual egoism is that of the group; the only one that can serve to moderate the egoism of groups is that of another group that embraces them all."

"In any given society, every object of exchange has ... a fixed value that might be called its social value. It represents the amount of useful work intrinsic to it. By this must be understood not the total labor that it may have cost, but the part ... capable of producing socially useful effects."

"The task of the most advanced societies [is] a mission for justice... [we must] inject an even greater equity into our social relationships."

“A living cell consists entirely of inanimate, mineral molecules. But by the sheer fact of their combination the qualities characteristic of life emerge. ... Thus, it is an invariable fact that the whole may be something other than the sum of its parts.”

"If I do not conform to ordinary conventions, if in my mode of dress I pay no heed to what is customary in my country and in my social class, the laughter I provoke, the social distance at which I am kept, produce, although in a more mitigated form, the same results as any real penalty.”

"We use the word 'function' in preference to 'end' or 'goal' precisely because social phenomena generally do not exist for the usefulness of the results they produce. (1/2)

"Nothing is so vain and sterile as that scientific puritanism which, under the pretext that science is not fully established, counsels abstention and recommends to men that they stand by as indifferent witnesses, or at least resigned ones, at the march of events."

"As for the economists, though they formerly allowed themselves to be seduced by the simplicity of [their] theory, for some time they have sensed the necessity of tempering the rigor of their primitive orthodoxy and of opening themselves to more generous sentiments."

"The only remedy for the ill [of egoism] is to restore enough consistency to social groups for them to obtain a firmer grip on the individual, and for him to feel himself bound to them."