Chief Seattle Quotes

Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. ~ Chief Seattle

We are all children of the Great Spirit, we all belong to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble and if we keep carrying old grudges and do not work together, we will all die. ~ Chief Seattle

The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. ~ Chief Seattle

Your God loves your people and hates mine; he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man and leads him as a father leads his infant son, but he has forsaken his red children; he makes your people wax strong every day, and soon they will fill the land; while my people are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide, that will never flow again. The white man's God cannot love his red children or he would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. ~ Chief Seattle

If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. ~ Chief Seattle

When the green hills are covered with talking wires and the wolves no longer sing, what good will the money you paid for our land be then ~ Chief Seattle

Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. ~ Chief Seattle

This We Know. All Things Are Connected ~ Chief Seattle

All creation is one. What we do to one, we do to the entire web of life. ~ Chief Seattle

If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? ~ Chief Seattle

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. ~ Chief Seattle

All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. ~ Chief Seattle

Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints! ~ Chief Seattle

What is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pool at night? ~ Chief Seattle

My words are like the stars that never change. ~ Chief Seattle

Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. - Chief Seattle Suqwamish and Duwamish T ~ Kent Nerburn

Chief Seattle, of the Indians that inhabited the Seattle area, wrote a wonderful paper that has to do with putting oneself in tune with the universe. He said ~ Joseph Campbell

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful Earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the Earth and it is part of us. ~ Chief Seattle

How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? ~ Chief Seattle

Man belongs to the Earth, Earth does not belong to man ~ Chief Seattle

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. ~ Chief Seattle

Teach your children what we have taught our children: that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth. If we spit upon the ground we spit upon ourselves. This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth. One thing we know which the white man may one discover, our god is the same god. You may think now that you own him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the god of all people. And compassion is equal for all. this earth is precious to god, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on the creator. So love it as we have loved it. care for it as we have cared for it. and with all your mind, with all your heart, preserve it for our children and love as god loves us all. ~ Chief Seattle

We are part of the earth and it is part of us ... What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. ~ Chief Seattle

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clear and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and the man, all belong to the same family. ~ Chief Seattle

Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench. ~ Chief Seattle

The deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony and man - all belong to the same family ... The White Man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. ~ Chief Seattle

My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain ... There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. ~ Chief Seattle

The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? ~ Chief Seattle

All things are connected, like the blood that runs in your family "The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father." 1854 The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother. ~ Chief Seattle

The whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you might suffocate in your own waste. ~ Chief Seattle

This we know, the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. So hold in your mind the memory on the land as it is when you take it. And, with all your strength, with all your mind, and with all your heart ... ~ Chief Seattle

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth. ~ Chief Seattle

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath-the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. ~ Chief Seattle

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~ Chief Seattle

When the Earth is sick, the animals will begin to disappear, when that happens, The Warriors of the Rainbow will come to save them. ~ Chief Seattle

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only change of worlds. ~ Chief Seattle

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit ~ Chief Seattle

You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. ~ Chief Seattle

The white man will never be alone. Let him be just, and deal kindly with my people. For the dead are not powerless. ~ Chief Seattle

There is no death, only a change of worlds. ~ Chief Seattle

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. ~ Chief Seattle

She stood looking carefully at the labeled portraits Ursala had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches, and Ursala's favorite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee.
"Isn't that where the massacre was?" asked Ellen.
"Yes. I'm going to go there when I'm grown up. To Wounded Knee."
"That seems sensible," said Ellen. ~ Eva Ibbotson

The chief thing is to make children feel good about themselves. They want to step into the shoes of a hero who is bigger and stronger, to face tremendous dangers and come home safely for tea. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith. ~ Criss Jami

The chief drawback with men is that they are too talkative. ~ Marilyn Monroe

To claim that America's "culture of violence" is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer. ~ Stephen King

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says 'I was beaten', he does not say 'My men were beaten. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

An Indian respects a brave man, but he despises a coward. ~ Chief Joseph

The starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason. ~ Georg Hermes

Order, for a liberal, means only peace; and the hope of a profound peace was one of the chief motives in the liberal movement. Concessions and tolerance and equality would thus have really led to peace, and to peace of the most radical kind, the peace of moral extinction. ~ George Santayana

After graduating, I'd moved to the Washington D.C. area to see what I could do with the skills I'd picked up from a creative writing degree. The chief export of the nation's capital is, of course, paper work, so I reckoned I could land some kind of writing or editing position at one of the many nonprofits and associations in the area. ~ Jeff Deck

The artist ... may suppose that ideas are his chief currency; but unless he is also attuned to feelings, in life and in art, he will not move his fellow human beings. ~ Eric Maisel

The role of a modern studio chief is much different to how the old studio chiefs used to operate. It's not so much a position of power anymore, but a position of influence. ~ Ronald Meyer

If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he'd probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people. ~ Moby

The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Seattle's support system got me through those early, difficult years. It was a very funky, very friendly, very relaxed place that had it all for a writer. ~ Alan Furst

For my part, I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the chief object of education is not to learn things; nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

I know myself, and I know the depth of my selfishness. I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken by the innocent for unselfishness, when all I am doing is sacrificing a small good - in this case postponement in attending to my hurt - for the sake of a far greater good) a peace of mind when I need think only of myself. ~ Graham Greene

The Secretary of Defense is not a super General or Admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the Department for the Commander-in-Chief and the country. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

Gratitude has a big job to do in us and our hearts. It is one of the chief ways that God infuses joy and resilience into the daily struggle of life. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There must be thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman. ~ William James

That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes
the legal subordination of one sex to the other
is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other. ~ John Stuart Mill

The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Big Cyndi is six-six and on the planetoid side of three hundred pounds, the former intercontinental tag-team wrestling champion with Esperanza, aka Big Chief Mama to Esperanza's Little Pocahontas. Her head was cube shaped and topped with hair spiked to look like the Statue of Liberty on a bad acid trip. She wore more makeup than the cast of Cats, her clothing form-fitted like sausage casing, her scowl the stuff of sumos. ~ Harlan Coben

The [chief] characteristic of Hitler's leadership [was] his over-estimation of the power of the will. [To win the war] this will had only to be translated into faith down to the youngest private soldier. ~ Erich Von Manstein

A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. - Robert Goizueta, chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company, April 1997 ~ Tom Standage

Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. ~ William Temple

I was the understudy to the understudy in a year-two production of 'Big Chief Red Feather.' The boy who had the lead broke his arm, and then the understudy got chicken pox. And I loved it. I got to wear the most feathers in my headdress. ~ Sarah Snook

For the Negro, Andrew Johnson did less than nothing when once he realized that the chief beneficiary of labor and economic reform in the South would be freedmen. His inability to picture Negroes as men made him oppose efforts to give them land; oppose national efforts to educate them; and above all things, oppose their rights to vote. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't know how to do their jobs. "I don't know how to sell this," they explain, frowning, as though it's your fault. "I don't know how to package this. I don't know what the market is for this book. I don't know how we're going to draw attention to this." In most occupations, people try to hide their incompetence; only in publishing is it flaunted as though it were the chief qualification for the job. ~ Donald E. Westlake

Dr. Johnson has said that the chief glory of a country arises from its authors. But then that is only as they are oracles of wisdom; unless they teach virtue, they are more worthy of a halter than of the laurel. ~ Jane Porter

St. Triduana devoted herself to God in a solitary life at Rescobie in Angus (now Forfarshire). While dwelling there, a prince of the country having conceived an unlawful passion for her is said to have pursued her with his unwelcome attentions. To rid herself of his importunities, as a legend relates, Triduana bravely plucked out her beautiful eyes, her chief attraction, and sent them to her admirer. Her heroism, it is said, procured for her the power of curing diseases of the eyes. ~ Michael Barrett

But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life. Although I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic formula and indigestible dates - unpalatable diets, until you wish that books and science and you were buried in the depths of the sea.

At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch. ~ Helen Keller

The Assyrian. That is, the persecutors of the church: who are here called Assyrians by the prophet: because the Assyrians were at that time the chief enemies and persecutors of the people of God. - Ibid. Seven shepherds, &c. Viz., the pastors of God's church, and the defenders of the faith. The number seven in scripture is taken to signify many: and when eight is joined with it, we are to under stand ~ Anonymous

Prayer is my chief work, and it is by means of it that I carry on the rest. ~ Thomas Hooker

The chief imagination of Christendom,
Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself
That he has made that hollow face of his
More plain to the mind's eye than any face
But that of Christ. ~ William Butler Yeats

It is indeed a misfortune for a woman to be without beauty, as with men the eye is the chief arbiter of qualities in the sex. Her beauty is her capital
her worth in the market matrimonial depends upon it. With her the Virtues are less reverenced when unaccompanied by the Graces. The sex understand this very well; and hence they seek mainly to make captive the eye, knowing the mind and heart will follow as a matter of course. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Did you pull rank?" "On a chief warrant officer?" They'd reached the link, and he slapped the call button. "Do I look suicidal? ~ Tanya Huff

The murder rate in Chicago is skyrocketing, and you see who's doing it and perpetrating it - they all look like Chief Keef. When it comes to the point that, you know, that kids who are doing the killings, and they're kids 13 to 19 years old, and you can replicate that in New Orleans, you can replicate that in Oakland. All the kids look the same. ~ Lupe Fiasco

Chief Superintendent Arnot might hold power, but Armand Gamache was the more powerful man. ~ Louise Penny

One's ignorance is one's chief asset. ~ Wallace Stevens

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

My most important title is Mom in Chief ~ Michelle Obama

The habit of giving up when the present task is half finished and try something else is one of the chief causes of failure. ~ Christian D. Larson

Seattle, I get a call from Ben. ~ Gayle Forman

I truly believe my job starts the minute I leave the baseball field. Going out and catching ground balls and hitting, that's a job, and that's what I've wanted to do ever since I was a kid. But when you think about leaving that field, that's when the job and the demands really start. In New York, Seattle, every city. The community, the media, business stuff. You have to stay on a narrow path. ~ Alex Rodriguez

Simply as a writer of books I'm thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to build a central library, and moreover to rebuild every other library in the city: 28 of them. ~ Jonathan Raban