Randolph Bourne
The years surrounding the First World War produced a generation of American writers who pushed against the political and cultural currents of their time, working through essays and journalism to make their dissent heard. Randolph Silliman Bourne was one of those voices, born on May 30, 1886, in Bloomfield, and educated at Columbia University.
Working in English as an essayist and opinion journalist, Bourne contributed to a moment when American writers were finding new ways to engage with the ideas of their era. His roles as both a writer and an opinion journalist placed him within a broader culture of prose that took argument seriously, and his education at Columbia gave him a foundation from which he worked throughout his career as an essayist.
Bourne died on December 22, 1918, in New York City, at the age of thirty-two. His life and career are recorded in sources including the Open Library, which carries his full authorized name — Bourne, Randolph Silliman, 1886–1918 — as the formal designation under which his work is catalogued.
Quotes by Randolph Bourne
Those persons who refuse to act as symbols of society’s folk ways, as counters in the game of society’s ordaining, are outlawed.
A cultivation of the powers of one’s personality is one of the greatest needs of life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak, and act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock.
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.