Chief Seattle Quotes

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth.

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.

We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men

What I really believe is the only hopeful relation between our life and the whole of life is one of reverence and respect and of feeling at one with it. The other attitude which is the one our society is based on is devastating and it is killing the earth and it is killing us too.

The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.

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.

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.

Most of us really aren't horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us. Put 'em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature, rather than being the lords over nature.

I think it's really important that we understand that we share this world and we're connected to it.

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

A glad welcome to this affirmation by a group of psychologists that the self does not stop at the skin nor even with the circle of human relationships but is interwoven with the lives of trees and animals and soil; that caring for the deepest needs of persons and caring for our threatened planet are not in conflict.

Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.

The environment is in us, not outside of us. The trees are our lungs, the rivers our bloodstream. We are all interconnected, and what you do to the environment ultimately you do to yourself.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre, and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive.

My definition is that geo-enlightenment is understanding the interconnectedness of things.

Unless we connect directly with the earth, we will not have the faintest clue why we should save it…. Only if we understand the beauty of nature will we love it, and only if we become alerted to learn about the planet's disease processes can we decide to live our lives with a proper sense of ecological responsibility.

I'm a child of the Earth, postcode unknown.

Nature does not compartmentalise. Its instinct is integrative and holistic.

Sustainability makes good business sense, and we're all on the same team at the end of the day. That's the truth about the human condition.

All living things on earth are kindred.

We should be evolving into a new age of business with a worldview that maintains one simple proposition - that all of nature: humans, animals, earth, are interconnected and interdependent.

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.