Chief Seattle Quotes
120 Chief Seattle Quotes
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That… which to us looks eternal, may change.
Chief Seattle
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion on our fathers for centuries untold, and why to us looks eternal, may change.
Chief Seattle
Today it is fair; tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like stars that never set.
Chief Seattle
The white man’s god cannot love his red children or he would protect them. They seem to be orphans and can look nowhere for help. How can we become brothers? How can your father become our father and bring us prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Chief Seattle
Your god seems to us to be partial. He came to the white man. We never saw him. We never even heard his voice. He gave the white man laws, but he had no word for his red children whose teeming millions filled this vast continent as the stars fill the firmament.
Chief Seattle
He had no word for his red children whose teeming millions filled this vast continent as the stars fill the firmament.
Chief Seattle
The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Chief Seattle
Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry god, let you might forget it. The red man could never remember nor comprehend it.
Chief Seattle
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them by the great, spirit, and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Chief Seattle
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return.
Chief Seattle
Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.
Chief Seattle
We will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.
Chief Seattle
Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance.
Chief Seattle
Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter. why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people?
Chief Seattle
Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.
Chief Seattle
Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny.
Chief Seattle
We may be brothers after all. We will see.
Chief Seattle
I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children.
Chief Seattle
Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people.
Chief Seattle
Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
Chief Seattle
Even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits.
Chief Seattle
The dead are not powerless.
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.
Chief Seattle
Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.
Chief Seattle
Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny.
Chief Seattle
We may be brothers after all.
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 sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Chief Seattle
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
Chief Seattle
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.
Chief Seattle
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.
Chief Seattle
We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
Chief Seattle
The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers.
Chief Seattle
The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man--all belong to the same family.
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.
Chief Seattle
The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes.
Chief Seattle
Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.
Chief Seattle
But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh.
Chief Seattle
And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.
Chief Seattle
We shall see.
Chief Seattle
One thing we know, which the white man may one day 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 man, and his compassion is equal for the red man and the white.
Chief Seattle
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