Black Elk Quotes

Every kingdom divided against itself shall be desolated.

The first time I experienced war, I thought the world was ending.

War is hell. Hollywood fantasizes about it and makes it look good... war sucks.

Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.

Then comes the catastrophe. Then the great mobilization will take place in Europe; 16-18 million men, the flower of the various nations, armed with the best tools of death, will enter the field as enemies. But, I am convinced, that behind the great mobilization there stands the great havoc. It will not come through our party, but rather yours. You are driving things to the limit. You are leading us to catastrophe. You will reap what you have sown

All the business houses, banks, stores, etc., in the city were robbed and burned save one, and... most of the businessmen killed.... Mrs. Reed put out the fire six times to save her house, and they would fire it anew, but she by almost superhuman exertions saved it.... One lady threw her arms around her husband, and begged of them to spare his life. They rested the pistol on her arm as it was around his body, and shot him dead, and the fire from the pistol burnt the sleeve of her dress….The very air seems charged with blood and death.... The fires were still glowing in the cellars... Here and there among the embers could be seen the bones of those who had perished.... The sickening odor of burned flesh was oppressive. Pandemonium itself seems to have broken loose... and death runs riot over the country….

Each secession destroys the unity of a nation.

Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages. Nations had risen against nations, employing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other. Wheel within wheel, the vast machine was instinct with the restless spirit of desolation.

… far from making one single Republic, this land has reverted to a state of many little republics of towns and localities.

All the gods are dead except the god of war.

Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous.

By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I's Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century.

War is hell. You can't photograph a flying bullet, but you can capture genuine fear.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have - and all you may lose forever.

A hospital alone shows what war is.

Wars break things; they break stories.

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

A war is a horrible thing, but it's also a unifier of countries.

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.

Through this same man and me hath all this war been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain.

War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.

When men talk about war, the stories and terminology vary - it's this battle, these weapons, this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world, women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire, they speak of death, and they speak of starvation.