Chief Seattle Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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 white man will never be alone.

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

Chief Seattle
To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.

Chief Seattle
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?... The end of living and the beginning of survival.

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
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
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.

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
We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumes flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle: these are our brothers. All things are connected like the blood which unites one's family.

Chief Seattle