Winona LaDuke Quotes

Every action or inaction has an impact-good or bad-upon our surroundings, and anything we do today will have an impact on the lives of our grandchildren.

The World is not ours to keep. We hold it in trust for future generations.

When I think about my legacy, I think about the world that we leave behind for our children.

One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?'

I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.

There are generations yet unborn, whose very lives will be shifted and shaped by the moves you make and the actions you take.

I came to this office to solve problems, and not pass them on to future Presidents and future generations.

Look at a child and realize that their future is in your hands. It's not just those who will be here fifty years from now. The decisions we make in the next ten years will shape the next 10,000 years.

Perhaps a good resolution for the new year would be to keep asking what world we want to pass on to the next generation. Indeed to ask whether we have a real and vivid sense of that next generation.

We are too careless of posterity; not considering that as they are, so the next generation will be.

If we don't make tough decisions today our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.

Real leadership means tackling tough problems ourselves and not leaving them to our children.

We must strive to become good ancestors.

Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.

Whatever we do or fail to do will influence the course of history.

Land is not something you inherit from your parents. It is something you borrow from your children.

Why we should put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

We want to believe that we can continue doing what we've done for the past thousand years and not worry about the consequences coming back to us.

Are we being good ancestors?

We seem to have lost the wisdom of the indigenous people, which dictated that in any major decision, the first consideration was 'How will this decision we're making today affect our people in the future? These days, decisions are made based on the bottom line.

In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, we must in turn plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will benefit the generations to come.