“You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.”
Lincoln Hall Speech (1879)
Context: Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. 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 the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.
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Chief Joseph17
Nez Percé Chieftain 1840–1904Related quotes
Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army
"Modern Times"
Poetry, Miscellaneous poems
“No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.”
John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
Alice Moore Hubbard (1861–1915) American activist
Introduction.
An American Bible (1912)
Context: Elbert Hubbard sees, too, that just so long as there is one woman who is denied any right that man claims for himself, there is no free man; that no man can be a superior, true American so long as one woman is denied her birthright of life, liberty and happiness.
He knows that freedom to think and act, without withholding that right from any other, evolves humanity — Therefore he gives his best energy to inspiring men and women to think and to act, each for himself. He pleads for the rights of children, for so-called criminals, for the insane, the weak, and all those who having failed to be a friend to themselves, need friendship most. The Golden Rule is his rule of life.
His work is to emancipate American men and women from being slaves to useless customs, outgrown mental habits, outgrown religion, outgrown laws, outgrown superstitions. He would make each human being rely upon himself for health, wealth and happiness.
“where a man feels at home, outside of where he’s born, is where he’s meant to go.”
Ernest Hemingway book Green Hills of Africa
Source: Green Hills of Africa
“I love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it up for any mortal man.”
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist
Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1225; English translation by Sir Richard Jebb
Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player
Responding to a reporter asking whether or not he believed that other players merited salaries comparable to his own (i.e. $52,000 a year, as per Ruth's newly signed 1922 contract), as quoted in "Have to Get More of 'Em,' Says Babe Ruth When He Hears of the Income Tax," in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 10, 1922)
Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer
Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen