“War is the health of the State, wrote Bourne, and in his full realization of what that meant, he recognized the roots of modern totalitarianism years before the psychoanalysis of fascism.”

—  Randolph Bourne

Page 5.
Michael Grieg quotes

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "War is the health of the State, wrote Bourne, and in his full realization of what that meant, he recognized the roots o…" by Randolph Bourne?
Randolph Bourne photo
Randolph Bourne 20
American writer 1886–1918

Related quotes

Jacques Ellul photo

“Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 396
Context: Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal. This is why I maintain that no state in the modern world is legitimate. No present-day authority can claim to be instructed by God, for all authority is set in the framework of a totalitarian state. This is why I decide for anarchy.

“Randolph Bourne has not been forgotten, not completely. People are still reading his work. They're still talking about his ideas and about his memorable phrases. The most famous of these has gradually become so widely quoted in our culture that millions of people have heard it, even heard it repeatedly, without ever learning who originally wrote or said it: "War is the health of the State."”

Jeff Riggenbach (1947)

About Randolph Bourne
"Ayn Rand and the Early Libertarian Movement," 2010

Richard Pipes photo

“In 1925, Mussolini adopted the term [totalitarian] and assigned it a positive meaning. He defined Fascism as ‘totalitarian’ in the sense that it politicized everything ‘human’ as well as ‘spiritual’: ‘Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 243

Albert Einstein photo

“It's convenient with that fellow Einstein, every year he retracts what he wrote the year before.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Es ist bequem mit dem Einstein. Jedes Jahr widerruft er, was er das vorige Jahr geschrieben hat.
Letter to Paul Ehrenfest, 26 December 1915. Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 8, Doc. 173.
1910s

“The collectivism of fascism subordinates the individual to the totalitarian state and subjects him to ruthless dictatorship.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

A. James Gregor photo

“The individual was the state, and the state was Italy, and Italy was Fascism, and Mussolini was all of them. Such a series of substitutions constitutes the sustaining logic of charismatic totalitarian socialism.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 326

Michael Johns photo

“Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Seventy Years of Evil: Soviet Crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev," Policy Review, Fall 1987, by Michael Johns: In the former Soviet Union, we face an 'Evil Empire'.

Randolph Bourne photo

“War is the health of the State.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

¶35. Published under "Psychology of the State," The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 21.
"The State" (1918)
Context: All of which goes to show that the State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modern free creative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. War is the health of the State. Only when the State is at war does the modern society function with that unity of sentiment, simple uncritical patriotic devotion, cooperation of services, which have always been the ideal of the State lover. … How unregenerate the ancient State may be…is indicated by the laws against sedition, and by the Government's unreformed attitude on foreign policy.

“The totalitarian nature of modern war renders invalid the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Must We Go to War? (1937)

Related topics