“Whenever you meet with men, treat them as if you were of one kin with them; never seek to harm them unless they first attack.”
Strangers should be met with the same goodwill shown to family, and violence is only ever a last, defensive resort.
— Traditional Greenland Wisdom, Greenland
Source: Traditional Greenlandic Inuit saying, recorded in Knud Rasmussen, Eskimo Folk-Tales, trans. W. Worster, tale "The Woman Who Had a Bear as a Foster-Son" (1921)
More Proverbs from Greenland
He who rests, rusts.
Constant motion, work, and effort keep a person capable; standing still leads to decline.
Old age does not lie.
The knowledge and judgment built up over a long life can be trusted.
The world is great indeed.
A lifetime of travel and effort reveals just how vast and humbling the world truly is.
Be careful never to tell what you have seen, or it will go ill with your hunting hereafter.
Boasting about good fortune, especially in hunting, is believed to turn luck bad; discretion protects what you have gained.
The human soul is what makes you beautiful, what makes you into a human being.
Inner character and spirit, not outward appearance, define a person's true worth.
Nature is great; but are not men greater?
Human endurance and the works people build are, in their own way, as remarkable as the vastness of nature itself.