While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them. – Emile Durkheim
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them. – Emile Durkheim
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. – Emile Durkheim
Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations reality is therefore abandoned. – Emile Durkheim
The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it — a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished. – John Stuart Mill