Randolph Bourne Quotes

War is the health of the state.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

We may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.

Our real duty is always found running in the direction of our worthiest desires.

Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care as any other fragile and precious thing.

Friendships are fragile things and require as much care in handling as any other fragile and precious thing.

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

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

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

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.