We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit. We do not want to learn that.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a desire to avoid religious conflict and division over interpretations of spirituality.
Chief Joseph's quote reflects a profound philosophical stance on spirituality and human interaction. He suggests that organized religion often leads to contentious debates and disagreements about the divine, which diminish the pure essence of spiritual connection. Instead, he advocates for a personal, unadulterated understanding of the Great Spirit, which transcends human quarrels and divisions, emphasizing unity in spiritual belief rather than conflict.
In practice
In a conversation about religious tolerance at a community gathering.
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.
It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and the broken promises.
If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow.
The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.
All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.
Our chiefs are killed. . . . The little children are freezing to death. . . . My people have no blankets, no food. . . . My heart is sick and sad. . . . I will fight no more forever.
I am one who has been acquainted with the night
And indeed there will be time for the yellow smoke that slides along the street rubbing its back upon the window-panes; there will be time , there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of toast and tea.
Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.
Men are always doomed to be duped, not so much by the arts of the other as by their own imagination. They are always wooing goddesses, and marrying mere mortals.
In a sense, by closing off the idea that young Muslims, and particularly young Muslim men, can be American heroes, it increases the chance that they'll try to be some other kind of hero. And that, I think, is entirely counterproductive.
History says, 'Don't hope on this side of the grave.'
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