“As we encounter each other, we see our diversity — of background, race, ethnicity, belief – and how

we handle that diversity will have much to say about whether we will in the end be able to rise
successfully to the great challenges we face today.”
― Dan Smith, The State of the World Atlas

“Much as people might like to stress their attachment to particular territories, all societies have
originally come from somewhere else to live in the lands they presently occupy. Moreover, the future
will see some of them move elsewhere, in whole or in part, or be transformed over time by the
immigration of other peoples into their midst. People can reconcile themselves to these often
beneficial changes by recognizing that no society has ever had the exclusive possession of their land
for all time and by acknowledging that the world is not only the ancestral land of us all but will
remain as the wider homeland of everyone.”
― David Day

“The idea is more horny on paper than in practice.”

― Leonard Woolf, International Government

“I believe theology should be about one's way of life, a kind of gaze into onesself and others, and a
mode of one's profound existence in the world.”
― Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-
Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World

“Religion is about hospitality, solidarity, and responsibility or it is nothing at all.”

― Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-
Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World

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

[As quoted in Plutarch's Of Banishment]”

― Socrates

“Bigotry does not consort easily with free trade.”

― Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City

“If you like war, be a nationalist. If you like peace, be a citizen of the world.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This
Book

“Cairo and Alexandria were cosmopolitan not so much because they contained foreigners, but
because the Egyptian born in them is himself a stranger to his land.”
― Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club

“If the well-being of my loved place depends on the well-being of Earth, I have a good reason for
supporting the well-being of your loved place. I have selfish as well as cosmopolitan reasons for
preserving the home-places of all human beings. Cosmopolitanism becomes thicker and more potent
with this realization.”
― Nel Noddings, Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War
“if relativism about ethics and morality were true, then, at the end of many discussions, we. would
each have to end up by saying, “From where I stand, I am right. From where you stand, you are
right.” And there would be nothing further to say. From our different perspectives, we. would be
living effectively in different worlds. And without a shared world, what is there to discuss? People
often recommend relativism because they think it will lead to tolerance. But if we cannot learn from
one another what it is right to think and feel and do, then conversation between us will be pointless.
Relativism of that sort isn't a way to encourage conversation; it's just a reason to fall silent.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“The concept of non-violence has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary
ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order.
And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous.”
MARK KURLANSKY

“Many people say that arguing for nonviolence is unrealistic, but perhaps they are too enamored with reality.
When I ask them whether they would want to live in a world in which no one was arguing for nonviolence,
where no one held out for that possibility, they always say no.“
JUDITH BUTLER

“If there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justification for existing, then there must also
be something we can call a sense of possibility.
Whoever has it does not say for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he
invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. […] Such possibilities are said to inhibit a more
delicate medium, a hazy medium of mist, fantasy, daydreams, and the subjunctive mood. “
ROBERT MUSIL

“Nonviolence is not a means to a goal nor is it a goal in itself. It is, rather, a technique that exceeds both an
instrumental logic and any teleological scheme of development – it is an ungoverned technique, arguable
ungovernable.“
JUDITH BUTLER

“That human beings have the potential to be nonviolent […] implies a much higher image of the human being
than we are presented with in the mass media and throughout our present culture, but because of that very
culture, we can’t expect our nonviolent potential to manifest by itself.
To bring it to fruition we must first try to understand it better and get into the habit of using it creatively in our
relationships, our institutions, and our culture.”
MICHAEL NAGLER

“We live in a world of ‘overlapping destinies’, where the fates of cultures are heavily intertwined. It is no
longer a world of closed communities, where tyrannical orders or religious traditions represented the sole
layers of historical legitimacy. Never in the history of human race has nonviolence been so crucial.
Nonviolence has recently evolved from a single tactic of resistance to a cosmopolitical aim based on
international application of the principles of democracy.”
RAMIN JAHANBEGLOO

“Cultural purity is a contradiction in terms.”

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH

“Separation and exclusion have always been something aberrant for our constantly wandering species. Not
cosmopolitism is hard work, but its disproof.”
KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH

“Cosmopolitanism is not just – or perhaps not at all – an idea. Cosmopolitanism is infinite ways of being.“
CAROL B. BRECHENRIDGE
“Cosmopolitism conceived as a positive Ideal, be it formal or material, produces antinomies, which undermine
its inner coherence […] however, if it is thought as critical ideal, these difficulties vanish to a large extent. The
resulting conception of cosmopolitism [is] a negative ideal, which aims to block false totalizations.”
SEYLA BENHABIB

“Whenever a religious or theological difference becomes a source of conflict, that conflict is potentially
cosmopolitical. Contemporary cosmopolitics is a particularly ambiguous form of politics; it consits exclusively
of conflicts between universalities without readily made solutions.”
ETIENNE BALIBAR

“Transdisciplinary knowledge, in the cosmopolitan cause, is more readily a translational process of culture’s
inbetweenness than a transcendent knowledge of what lies beyond difference, in some common pursuite of the
universality of the human experience.“
CAROL B. BRECHENRIDGE

“The cosmopolitan impulse, which advances our common personhood is no luxury anymore. It has become a

necessity.”
KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH