“The modern State is not the rational and intelligent product of modern men desiring to live harmoniously together with security of life, property, and opinion. It is not an organization which has been devised as pragmatic means to a desired social end. All the idealism with which we have been instructed to endow the State is the fruit of our retrospective imaginations.”

—  Randolph Bourne

¶44. Published under &quot;Psychology of the State,&quot; The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 25, which omits the Oxford comma in the first sentence. <br class="br">&quot;The State&quot; (1918)

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Randolph Bourne20
American writer 1886–1918

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