Famous Quotes & Sayings

Chief Joseph

We live, we die, and like the grass and trees, renew ourselves from the soft earth of the grave. Stones crumble and decay, faiths grow old and they are forgotten, but new beliefs are born. The faith of the villages is dust now... but it will grow again... like the trees.

Black Elk

I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.

Black Elk

The power of the world always works in circles.

Black Elk

Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.

Black Elk

Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.

Black Elk

And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.

Black Elk

If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.

Black Elk

Everywhere is the center of the world. Everything is sacred.

Black Elk

Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World.

Black Elk

Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles.

Black Elk

But if the Vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet;for such things are of Spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.

Chaske Spencer

I think people should look at learning about Native American history the same as visiting Washington, D.C., and seeing the monuments there. It's all part of the package.

Carlos Mencia

Do you think we care about the feelings of Native Americans when we celebrate Columbus Day? That's the day that the white man discovered a land where Indians had been living for a few thousand years.

Isabel Wilkerson

America is made up of people who came from someplace else. Even the Native Americans came over the Bering strait... America is what it is because people came from someplace else.

Geronimo

I was born where there were no enclosures.

Henry David Thoreau

How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.

Henry David Thoreau

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

Henry David Thoreau

The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.

Henry David Thoreau

A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.

Henry David Thoreau

I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off.

Henry David Thoreau

It is worth the while to detect new faculties in man,--he is so much the more divine; and anything that fairly excites our admiration expands us. The Indian, who can find his way so wonderfully in the woods, possesses an intelligence which the white man does not,--and it increases my own capacity, as well as faith, to observe it. I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in other channels than I knew. It redeems for me portions of what seemed brutish before.

Henry David Thoreau

The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.

Ernest Holmes

Life is greater than you have ever known it.

Jay Leno

As you know, today was Don't Take Your Illegal Immigrant To Work Day here in Los Angeles. No, all across the nation they had a Day Without Immigrants, is what they call it. Or, as Native Americans call it, the good ol' days.

Jay Leno

Thanksgiving began in 1621 when Native Americans sat down with a bunch of undocumented pilgrims. They had dinner and the pilgrims never left.

Joseph Smith, Jr.

Verily, I say unto you, that the wisdom of man, in his fallen state, knoweth not the purposes and the privileges of my hold priesthood, but ye shall know when ye receive a fullness by reason of the anointing: For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just, for even now their females are more virtuous then the gentiles.

Ishmael Reed

Native Americans were driven off their land. Lincoln even took part in the Black Hawk campaign against the Native Americans in Illinois. While they were being exterminated and driven off their land, Whites were collecting assets.

Ishmael Reed

I reached the age of 70, because I have cultivated an association of multicultural intellectuals who are informed and alert to whatever "tricknology" that's laid on us by the powers that be. These include White ethnic intellectuals- people who know their roots- as well as Native American, Asian American, Hispanic and Black intellectuals. These are thirty, forty-year associations with some of the best minds around. Minds that are ignored by the media.

Jamaica Kincaid

I can't get upset about 'offensive to women' or 'offensive to blacks' or 'offensive to Native Americans' or 'offensive to Jews' ... Offend! I can't get worked up about it. Offend!

Julia Jones

I'm a Native American actress.

Julia Jones

There aren't very many notable Native American female figures historically. That's the way that it's been. Pocahontas and Sacajawea.

Paul Fussell

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Nobody else in the world has a form like the Native American musical, and Americans should be very proud.