Quotes about promises

“These people are not to be trusted,” I said.

“These people?”

“People with…” I looked over at the poshest person I’ve ever met and tried to think of the right word. “Entitlement,” I said. “They’re not good at keeping promises.

A promise is a promise, or as Nightingale put it, “either your word is good or it’s worthless.”

I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. … Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and broken promises. … You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. … 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.

When the land-hungry politicians tried to put him on the defensive, Ouray was sophisticated enough to present the Utes’ case to newspaper reporters. “The agreement an Indian makes to a United States treaty,” he said, “is like the agreement a buffalo makes with his hunters when pierced with arrows. All he can do is lie down and give in.”

“The Cheyennes do not break their word,” One-Eye replied. “If they should do so, I would not care to live longer.”

There are a lot of promises in the recycle bins of history.

Some promises are best broken. Trust me on this: I’m a politician.

I watched you keep your word with perfection. This is a thing lost to most people—it is the only genuine beauty in the world.

If there is a hell, perhaps it consists in living up to all one’s promises.

A politician is someone who promises you a bridge, even when there is no river.

Promises take many shapes, and the more…momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time.

I gave them the word of a Jedi Master that if they surrendered I would keep them from harm. I will not be made a liar.