Louis Riel Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

I wish to take notice that if there has ever been any contradiction in my life, it is at this moment, and do I appear excited? Am I very irritable? Can I control myself?

Louis Riel
I know that through the grace of God, I am the founder of Manitoba.

Louis Riel
I suppose the half-breeds in Manitoba, in 1870, did not fight for two hundred forty acres of land, but it is to be understood there were two societies who treated together. One was small, but in its smallness it had its rights. The other was great, but in its greatness it had no greater rights than the rights of the small, because the right is the same for everyone.

Louis Riel
People say the native stands on the edge of a chasm. It is not he who stands on the edge of a chasm; his claims are not false. They are just…Every step the Indian takes is based on a profound sense of fairness.

Louis Riel
The agitation in the North-West Territories would have been constitutional and would certainly be constitutional today, if, in my opinion, we had not been attacked.

Louis Riel
We must cherish our inheritance. We must preserve our nationality for the youth of our future. The story should be written down to pass on.

Louis Riel
I am glad that the Crown have proved that I am the leader of the Half-breeds in the North-West. I will perhaps be one day acknowledged as more than a leader of the Half-breeds, and if I am I will have an opportunity of being acknowledged as a leader of good in this great country.

Louis Riel
Every day in which I have neglected to prepare myself to die was a day of mental alienation.

Louis Riel
If you take the plea of the defence, that I am not responsible for my acts, acquit me completely, since I have been quarrelling with an insane and irresponsible Government. If you pronounce in favour of the Crown, which contends that I am responsible, acquit me all the same. You are perfectly justified in declaring that having my reason and sound mind I have acted reasonably and in self-defence, while the Government, my accuser, being irresponsible and consequently insane, cannot but have acted wrong, and if high treason there is, it must be on its side and not on my part.

Louis Riel
I am blessed by God. It is this trial that is going to show that I am going to be blessed by man during my existence, the benedictions are a guarantee that I was not wronged when by circumstance I was taken away from my adopted land to my native land.

Louis Riel
The ministers of an insane and irresponsible Government and its little one the North-West Council made up their mind to answer my petitions by surrounding me slyly and by attempting to jump upon me suddently and upon my people in the Saskatchewan. Happily when they appeared and showed their teeth to devour, I was ready; that is what is called my crime of high treason and for which they hold me to day.

Louis Riel
When I see British people sitting in the court to try me, remembering that the English people are proud of that word "Fair play," I am confident that I will be blessed by God and by man also. Not only Bishop Bourget spoke to me in that way, but Father Jean-Baptiste Bruno, the priest of Worcester, who was my director of conscience, said to me: "Riel, God has put an object into your hands the cause of the triumph of religion in the world, take care, you will succeed when most believe you have lost." I have got those words in my head, those words of J. B. Bruno and the late Archbishop Bourget.

Louis Riel
I have nothing but my heart and I have given it long ago to my country.
Immediately before his execution in 1885, when a guard asked him for a souvenir

Louis Riel
I think the verdict that has been given against me is a proof that I am more than ordinary myself, but that the circumstances and the help that is given is more than ordinary, are more than ordinary, and although I consider myself only as others, yet by the will of God, by his Providence, by the circumstances which have surrounded me for fifteen years, I think that I have been called to do something which at least in the North-West nobody has done yet, and in some way I think that to a certain number of people the verdict against me to day is a proof that maybe I am a prophet, maybe Riel is a prophet. He suffers for it.

Louis Riel
Even if I was going to be sentenced by you, Gentlemen of the Jury, I have this satisfaction that if I die, I will not be reputed by all men as insane, as a lunatic. A good deal has been said by the two Revd Fathers André and Fourmond. I cannot call them my friends, but they made no false testimony. I know that a long time ago they believed me more or less insane. Father Fourmond said that I would pass from a great passion to great calmness, that shows great control under contradiction and according to my opinion and with the help of God, I have that control.

Louis Riel
My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.

Louis Riel
Deeds are not accomplished in a few days, or in a few hours. A century is only a spoke in the wheel of everlasting time.

Louis Riel
We may be a small community and a Half-breed community at that — but we are men, free and spirited men, and we will not allow even the Dominion of Canada to trample on our rights.

Louis Riel