QuoteProject
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? ... The end of living and the beginning of survival.
Chief Seattle
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the connection between humanity and the environment, highlighting the intrinsic value of nature beyond material ownership.

Chief Seattle's quote reflects a deep understanding of the relationship between humans and the natural world. It suggests that nature cannot truly be owned or commodified like a product, as it encompasses essential elements of life such as the sky and land that nurture and support us. The phrase hints at a shift from living harmoniously with nature to merely surviving in a disconnected, materialistic manner.

Themes

NatureEnvironmentSurvivalOwnershipConnection

In practice

Example use cases

This quote would be powerful in a speech at an environmental rally.

More from Chief Seattle

What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.
Chief SeattleRead
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children
Chief SeattleRead
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only change of worlds.
Chief SeattleRead
All things are connected, like the blood that runs in your family "The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father." 1854 The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.
Chief SeattleRead
Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Chief SeattleRead
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things are the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man.
Chief SeattleRead

Similar quotes

Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
Michael OndaatjeRead
Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
The world, when you look at it, it just can't be random. I mean, it's so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we've seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the precious life-giving nature of our own planet.
Chris HadfieldRead
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.
James L. Farmer, Jr.Read
For nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Charles DickensRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.