When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the journey from conflict to peace and the wisdom gained with age.
Red Cloud's quote emphasizes the transformation from a youth engaged in battles and strife to an elder who values peace and leadership. It illustrates the lessons learned through conflict and the desire for harmony that often comes with age and experience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about conflict resolution.
I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.
The Great Spirit will not make me suffer because I am ignorant. He will put me in a place where I shall be better off than in this world.
We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country. . . to seek for gold in the far west . . . Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. . . . His presence here is . . . an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be allowed for corn?
Look at me. I was a warrior on this land where the sun rises, now I come from where the sun sets. Whose voice was first surrounded on this land - the red people with bows and arrows. The Great Father says he is good and kind to us. I can't see it.
I once played a sheriff who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead in twenty-seven minutes of a thirty minute show.
So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do.
It is the right of government to protect the weak; it is the right of the weak to find in their courts fair treatment before the law.
The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.
Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.
Only when women wield power in significant numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women … that will be a society that works for everyone.
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