"Halbwachs has extensively discussed the relation between memory and the social frameworks which support it. He points out that the most important part of mental organization is derived from social organization; that most of the contexts which carry human memory are social. Memory thus is mainly a collective process. He contends that even childhood memories are collective and exist only because the child's mind is organized by a social process and perceives and remembers within a social context."—Robert E. L. Faris

"No one before Halbwachs had dared to take on the question of considering how it is that the institutional framework of society affects memory. In a sense he belongs to the tradition represented by the 'sociology of knowledge,' but he fashions new questions that no others in that tradition have examined'—Robert K. Merton

"The Collective Memory covers the essence of Halbwachs's thinking on collective memory—a topic which was seen by Halbwachs as the most important of all of those with which he had become concerned in his wide range of scholarly work. In my judgment, what he wrote on the topic constitutes a contribution of high order."—Herbert Blumer