Cosmopolitanism Quotes

• We don't need this religious cosmopolitanism. It's no good.

  Vladimir Zhirinovsky

  Religious, Needs

  "Vladimir Zhirinovsky on Religion in Russia". www.forerunner.com. May 1, 1996.

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• California, that advance post of our civilization, with its huge aircraft factories, TV and film studios, automobile way of life... its flavourless cosmopolitanism, its charlatan philosophies and religions, its lack of anything old and well-tried rooted in tradition and character.

  J. B. Priestley

  Philosophy, Character, Civilization

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• That man's the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Country, Men, Native

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)”, p.575, Delphi Classics

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• We know that art is connected with the land, with its salt, with its smell, that outside of national culture there is no art. Cosmopolitanism - a world in which things lose their color and form, and words lose their significance. We love in our past all that we consider native, wonderful and fair.

  Ilya Ehrenburg

  Art, Past, Color

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• It is this capacity for relentless self-criticism that should be - everywhere - the true measure of intellectual freedom and cosmopolitanism, not the entrenched cultural power and self-congratulatory moral rhetoric of some people in countries long accustomed to telling other societies what to do and how to behave.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Country, Self, Long

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another

  Kwame Anthony Appiah

  People, Helping, Enough

  Kwame Anthony Appiah (2015). “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers”, p.80, Penguin UK

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• We need to return to the cosmopolitanism of Alexandria of yore, and marry that with the tolerance and democracy of Europe today

  Ismail Serageldin

  Europe, Tolerance, Democracy

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• One of the unspoken themes that I'm grappling with in Day of Honey is the relationship between violence and cosmopolitanism. It's one thing to comprehend violence as an outgrowth of ignorance, poverty, and backwardness. It's another matter entirely to confront incredible atrocities in a country with a rich civic and intellectual life.

  Annia Ciezadlo

  Country, Ignorance, Intellectual

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The present dominant values (xenophilia, cosmopolitanism, narcissistic individualism, humanitarianism, bourgeois economism, hedonism, homophilia, permissivenes, etc.) are actually anti-values - values of devirilising weakness, since they deplete a civilization's vital energies and weaken its defensive or affirmative capacities.

  Guillaume Faye

  Civilization, Weakness, Energy

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• We are social beings who make communities with an urgency, and it is a stern charge to make us take refuge in the lonely world of oneself. ...Racism attempts to occlude our cosmopolitanism (of the songs in and out of our bones), and it often appropriates our mild forms of xenophobia into its own virulent project. Difference among peoples is something that we negotiate in our everyday interactions, asking questions and being better informed of our mutual realities. To transform difference into the body is an act of bad faith, a denial of our shared nakedness.

  Vijay Prashad

  Song, Lonely, Xenophobia

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• When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.

  Bill Bryson

  Growing Up, Dark, Thinking

  Bill Bryson (1989). “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America”, p.5, VNR AG

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• One of the most heartening phenomena in today's Britain is the great diversity of the modern nerd - the nerd is out and proud, and while she may love 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' merchandise more than is strictly warranted, she is in every way to be cherished as an exemplar of cosmopolitanism and tolerance.

  Will Self

  Diversity, Tolerance, Nerd

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