Quotes by Chief Seattle

“Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!”

“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....”

“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 ...”

“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.Whatever he ...”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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 ...”

“What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.”

“When the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among the white men shall have become a myth, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe. The white man will...”

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

“At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The...”

“Every part of all this soil is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hollowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. The very dust you now sta...”

“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.”

“We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the 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 need...”

“Tribe follows tribe, nations follow nations like the tides of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.”

“Today is fair. Tomorrow may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change.”

“How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?”

“Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. 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 o...”