Quotessence
Home / Books / What I Saw in America

What I Saw in America

Book by G.K. Chesterton · 3 quotes · Foreigners, Humilty, Internationalism

Filter quotes by topic

AllForeignersHumiltyInternationalismLocal GovernmentNationalismNew York CityOne World GovernmentPhiladelphiaPoliticsTradition

What I Saw in America Quotes

“Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities…To make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rather of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back.”

PoliticsNationalismOne World GovernmentLocal GovernmentInternationalism
Book:What I Saw in America
Create image

“It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.”

TraditionNew York CityPhiladelphia
Book:What I Saw in America
Create image