All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be content when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the equality and freedom of all humans as a fundamental right.
Chief Joseph's quote captures the essence of human rights and universal kinship, asserting that all people are entitled to freedom and equal treatment since they are all born from the same earthly origins. The imagery of rivers running backward highlights the absurdity of denying freedom to anyone, just as it is unnatural for rivers to flow against their course.
In practice
In a speech advocating for civil rights, this quote can inspire a call for equality.
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.
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.
But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He [Capablanca] wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.
The true man breathes with his heels.
If one does away with the fact of the Resurrection, one also does away with the Cross, for both stand and fall together, and one would then have to find a new center for the whole message of the gospel.
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