Randolph Bourne Quotes

#1. The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated.

Randolph Bourne

#2. A man with few friends is only half-developed; there are whole sides of his nature which are locked up and have never been expressed. He cannot unlock them himself, he cannot even discover them; friends alone can stimulate him and open him.

Randolph Bourne

#3. Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.

Randolph Bourne

#4. All we can ever do in the way of good to people is to encourage them to do good to themselves.

Randolph Bourne

#5. A good discussion increases the dimensions of everyone who takes part.

Randolph Bourne

#6. The ironic life is a life keenly alert, keenly sensitive, reacting promptly with feelings of liking or dislike to each bit of experience, letting none of it pass without interpretation and assimilation, a life full and satisfying - indeed a rival of the religious life.

Randolph Bourne

#7. A cultivation of the powers of one's personality is one of the greatest needs of life.

Randolph Bourne

#8. Those persons who refuse to act as symbols of society's folk ways, as counters in the game of society's ordaining, are outlawed.

Randolph Bourne

#9. Do not take the world too seriously, nor let too many social conventions oppress you.

Randolph Bourne

#10. Culture, like the kingdom of heaven, lies within us, and not in foreign galleries and books.

Randolph Bourne

#11. Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

Randolph Bourne

#12. We classify things for the purpose of doing something to them. Any classification which does not assist manipulation is worse than useless.

Randolph Bourne

#13. So to all who are situated as I am, I would say
Grow up as fast as you can.

Randolph Bourne

#14. Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing.

Randolph Bourne

#15. We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear.

Randolph Bourne

#16. He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the elephant goes.

Randolph Bourne

#17. War is the health of the state.

Randolph Bourne

#18. In America our radicalism is still simply amateurish and incompetent.

Randolph Bourne

#19. The ironist is ironical not because he does not care, but because he cares too much.

Randolph Bourne

#20. Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.

Randolph Bourne

#21. For the secret of friendship is a mutual admiration, and it is the realization or suspicion that that admiration is lessening on one side or the other that swiftly breaks the charm.

Randolph Bourne

#22. The world has never favored the experimental life. It despises poets, fanatics, prophets and lovers.

Randolph Bourne

#23. If you are not an idealist by the time you are twenty you have no heart, but if you are still an idealist by the time you are thirty, you don't have a head.

Randolph Bourne

#24. One keeps healthy in wartime ... by a vigorous assertion of values in which war has no part.

Randolph Bourne

#25. War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.

Randolph Bourne

#26. With the shock of war the state comes into its own again.

Randolph Bourne

#27. For we do not do what we want to do, but what is easiest and most natural for us to do, and if it is easy for us to do the wrong thing, it is that that we will do.

Randolph Bourne