Louis Riel - People Quotes

5 Sourced Quotes

View all Louis Riel Quotes
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
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
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
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
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