If the Four Freedoms mean anything after this war, we don’t bother about whether we are citizens of one country or another.”Īnd in a response to an interrogator from the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1948, Chaplin said, “I consider myself as much a citizen of America as anybody else and my great love has always been here in this country at the same time I don’t feel I am allied to any one particular country. In a 1942 speech at “Artists’ Front to Win the War” at Carnegie Hall, Chaplin declared, “I’m not a citizen, I don’t need citizenship papers, and I’ve never had patriotism in that sense for any country, but I’m a patriot to humanity as a whole. But wherever I live I’ll conform to the rules, laws and regulations of that country.” I’d keep my first citizenship because, being an accident of birth, it wouldn’t have any real significance. It could have been Burma or China or Timbuktu, I’d still be the way I am. Rather than directing their questions at the film itself, the hostile journalists interrogated Chaplin about his political sympathies, patriotism, tax affairs and refusal to adopt American citizenship.Ĭhaplin is also quoted in “My Father, Charlie Chaplin” by Charles Chaplin Jr.: “I consider myself a citizen of the world, an internationalist… I just happen to have been born in London, England.

Charlie Chaplin quotes this dialogue in “My Autobiography” from the press conference for Monsieur Verdoux, which took place right after its premiere in New York. I consider myself a citizen of the world,’ I answered.” ‘I see no reason to change my nationality. ”‘Why haven’t you become a citizen?’ said another voice.

Brave quotes war