Top 54 Chief Seattle Quotes
#1. What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
Chief Seattle
#2. Contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.
Chief Seattle
#3. We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?
Chief Seattle
#4. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people, or He would protect them.
Chief Seattle
#5. How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Chief Seattle
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Chief Seattle
#11. 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
#12. Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!
Chief Seattle
#13. All creation is one. What we do to one, we do to the entire web of life.
Chief Seattle
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.
Chief Seattle
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#21. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things are the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man.
Chief Seattle
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been.
Chief Seattle
#26. 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
#27. Your religion was written on tablets of stone, ours on our hearts. 8. We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us.
Chief Seattle
#28. 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
#29. Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Chief Seattle
#30. My words are like the stars that never change.
Chief Seattle
#31. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons.
Chief Seattle
#32. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land.
Chief Seattle
#33. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
Chief Seattle
#34. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit
Chief Seattle
#36. Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun.
Chief Seattle
#37. 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
#38. Humans merely share the earth. We can only protect the land, not own it.
Chief Seattle
#39. 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
#40. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Chief Seattle
#41. We are a part of the earth and it is part of us.
Chief Seattle
#42. Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench.
Chief Seattle
#43. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Chief Seattle
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.
Chief Seattle
#49. Man belongs to the Earth, Earth does not belong to man
Chief Seattle
#50. 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
#51. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth.
Chief Seattle
#53. 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
#54. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Chief Seattle
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