Native Quotes - Page 36

• Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch.

  Bill Bryson

  Years, Land, Long

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• The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury... Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree-a matter profoundly important to him.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Success, Brother, Native American

  38 Copy quote

• Because of the Civil Rights movement, new doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody ... Not just for blacks and whites, but also women and Latinos; and Asians and Native Americans; and gay Americans and Americans with a disability. They swung open for you, and they swung open for me. And that's why I'm standing here today-because of those efforts, because of that legacy.

  Barack Obama

  Inspiring, Native American, Gay

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• Old or young, healthy as a horse or a person with a disability that hasn't kept you down, man or woman, Native American, native born, immigrant, straight or gay - whatever; the test ought to be I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. I believe in religious liberty. I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in working hard and playing by the rules. I'm showing up for work tomorrow. I'm building that bridge to the 21st century. That ought to be the test.

  William J. Clinton

  Religious, Horse, Believe

  Clinton, William J. (1997). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995”, p.1417, Best Books on

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• As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters of our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us: "With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight and air and food and water and ideas," or, They went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them.

  U Thant

  Future, Air, Skills

  58 Copy quote

• The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

  William Shenstone

  Love, Country, Mean

  William Shenstone, Samuel Johnson, Robert Dodsley (1807). “Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc”, p.111

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• There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood-
  Touch of manner, hint of mood;
  And my heart is like a rhyme,
  With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

  Bliss Carman

  Heart, Autumn, Blood

  Bliss Carman (1931). “Bliss Carman's Poems”, McClelland & Stewart

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• To be authentic is literally to be your own author... to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Desire, Acting, Energy

  Warren G. Bennis, Patricia Ward Biederman (2009). “The Essential Bennis”, p.213, John Wiley & Sons

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• The greatest moments of Native History lie ahead of us if a great spiritual renewal and wakening should take place. The Native American has been a sleeping giant. He is awakening. The original Americans could become the evangelists who will help win America for Christ! Remember these forgotten people!

  Billy Graham

  Spiritual, Lying, Native American

  16 Copy quote

• When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. Now what's the difference?

  Jesse Owens

  Running, Country, Differences

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• ...what will be the outcome of this kind of thing? Holton predicts that "at best, the result could be Muslim enclaves in Western communities in which sharia supercedes native law." Or "at worst, sharia could start to creep into our lives and laws, changing our way of life little by little over time." That would be entirely in line with the stealth jihad goal of Islamizing American society.

  Robert Spencer

  Law, Goal, Community

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• Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear and sacred to us? I know you will cry with me, 'Never! Never!'

  Tecumseh

  Summer, Country, Giving Up

  48 Copy quote

• If today I had a young mind to direct, to start on the journey of life, and I was faced with the duty of choosing between the natural way of my forefathers and that of the... present way of civilization, I would, for its welfare, unhesitatingly set that child's feet in the path of my forefathers. I would raise him to be an Indian!

  Tom Brown, Jr.

  Children, Native American, Journey

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• The song that I will sing is an old song, so old that none knows who made it. It has been handed down through generations and was taught to me when I was but a little lad. It is now my own song. It belongs to me. This is a holy song (medicine-song), and great is its power. The song tells how, as I sing, I go through the air to a holy place where Yusun (The Supreme Being) will give me power to do wonderful things. I am surrounded by little clouds, and as I go through the air I change, becoming spirit only.

  Geronimo

  Song, Native American, Medicine

  129 Copy quote

• The idea of full dress in preparation for a battle comes not from a belief that it will add to the fighting ability. The preparation is for death, in case that should be the result of the conflict. Every Indian wants to look his best when he goes to meet the Great Spirit, so the dressing up is done whether in imminent danger is an oncoming battle or a sickness or injury at times of peace.

  Wooden Leg

  Death, Native American, Fighting

  "Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer".

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• My son, you are now flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. By the ceremony performed this day, every drop of white blood was washed from your veins; you were taken into the Shawnee Nation.

  Chief Blackfish

  Taken, Native American, Son

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• Although wrongs have been done to me, I live in hopes. I have not got two hearts....Now we are together again to make peace. My shame is as big as the earth, although I will do what my friends have advised me to do. I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man, but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses and everything else, it is hard for me to believe the white men any more.

  Black Kettle

  Horse, Believe, Native American

  "Who is the Savage?" by Black Kettle, www.pbs.org. 2001.

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• The Wise Man believes profoundly in silence - the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence - not a leaf, as it were, astire on the tree, not a ripple upon the surface of the shinning pool-his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life. Silence is the cornerstone of character.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Wise, Attitude, Believe

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• If a child is inclined to be grasping, or to cling to any of his or her little possessions, legends are related about the contempt and disgrace falling upon the ungenerous and mean person.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Children, Fall, Mean

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• It is my wish and the wishes of my people to live peaceably and quietly with you.

  Cornplanter

  Native American, People, Wish

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• We have taken so much from your culture, I wish you had taken something from ours...For there were some beautiful and good things within it. Perhaps now that the time has come, We are fearful that what you take will be lost.... I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success: His education, his skills, and society.

  Chief Dan George

  Beautiful, Taken, Native American

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• The Tonkawa killed him it make my heart hot. I want my people follow after white way. Some white people do that, too.

  Quanah Parker

  Native American, Heart, White

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• By peace our condition has been improved in the pursuit of civilized life.

  John Ross

  Native American, Pursuit, Civilized

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• Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Hard Work, Men, Hands

  "Of Books". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

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• The only thing Native Americans ever did better than the rest of us is spirituality. Of course, that's everything, isn't it?

  Deacon Jones

  Football, Native American, Nfl

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