6 Quotes Tagged: cosmopolitan

Still, for long the love of science triumphed over all other feelings. He became an artist deeply impressed by the marvels of art, a philosopher to whom no one of the higher sciences was unknown, a statesman versed in the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travelers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, and are of no country.

But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people...

Every particular society, when it is narrow and unified, is estranged from the all-encompassing society. Every patriot is harsh to foreigners. They arc only men. They arc nothing in his eyes - This is a drawback, inevitable but not compelling. The essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious, avaricious. iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within his walls. Distrust those cosmopolitans who go to great length in their books to discover duties they do not deign to fulfill around them. A philosopher loves the Tartars so as to be spared having to love his neighbors.

"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."

[As quoted in Plutarch's Of Banishment]

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.

John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe

[Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal]