Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jared Diamond

It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans, in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World.

Dennis Banks

What we did in the 1960s and early 1970s was raise the consciousness of white America that this government has a responsibility to Indian people. That there are treaties; that textbooks in every school in America have a responsibility to tell the truth. An awareness reached across America that if Native American people had to resort to arms at Wounded Knee, there must really be something wrong. And Americans realized that native people are still here, that they have a moral standing, a legal standing. From that, our own people began to sense the pride.

Elizabeth Warren

Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born,

Elizabeth Warren

I'm proud of my Native American heritage,

I didn't know much about my Native American ancestry, but as I got older I became more interested in it.

D. H. Lawrence

Not that the Red Indian will ever possess the broad lands of America. At least I presume not. But his ghost will.

Christopher Moore

I wanted a trumpet concerto that reflected Native American music because, well, there aren't any. I looked around for one but couldn't find anything. So it's a wide-open field.

Ambrose Bierce

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Andrew Jackson

That those tribes [the Sac and Fox Indians] cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizensis certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition.

Cynthia Ozick

Paradise is only for those who have already been there.

Conan O'Brien

The Justice Department ruled that Native American tribes are allowed to grow and sell marijuana on reservations. This decision was hailed as a victory by Native American leader Giggling Eagle.

David Gemmell

Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

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

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.

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.

Newt Gingrich

And my point was one I think that you'd agree with, which is there's no room in America for a black racist, a Latino racist, or a white racist, or an Asian racist, or a Native American racist. Now, we're either color blind or we're not color blind.

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.

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.

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!

Ernest Holmes

Life is greater than you have ever known it.

Michael Scott

I have always been interested in mythology and history. The more I read, the more I realized that there have always been people at the edges of history that we know very little about. I wanted to use them in a story and bring them back into the public's consciousness. Similarly with mythology: everyone knows some of the Greek or Roman legends, and maybe some of the Egyptian or Norse stories too, but what about the other great mythologies: the Celtic, Chinese, Native American?

Nas

No matter where you're from - you can be Native American, Italian, Jewish, Latino, African-American - whatever you are, we're all distant relatives.

Sherman Alexie

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.