American Indian Mythology Quotes

You said you like it on top. I spent all day imagining it. ~ Denise Grover Swank

See how long and bold my life line is? It's an indication of my sexual prowess. ~ Denise Grover Swank

This is my love line ... It says an incredibly sexy, but totally infuriating redheaded woman with barge into my life and drive me insane. ~ Denise Grover Swank

It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked.... Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. ~ Henry David Thoreau

From my bed I can see the moon tonight, so bright and ripe and salmon pink it looks as if it might drop from the sky. I imagine pirates on deck just before sunrise with the wood groaning and the moonlight streaking across the water in a straight line from the horizon. Did Caesar see the moon exactly so as he strode down the Roman Forum on the way to some debaucherous celebration? And what about Moses and Galileo and some wretched young Londoner pulling a cart full of corpses during the plague? or an American Indian crouched by a fire in a small clearing surrounded by huge primeval trees that glow orange from the flame? ~ Jonathan Hull

Oh, you're American,' said Mrs. Khan, holding out her hand. 'What a charming costume.'
'The Bengal Lancers were apparently a famous Anglo-Indian regiment,' said the young man. He pulled at his thighs to display the full ballooning of the white jodhpurs. 'Though how the Brits conquered the empire wearing clown pants is beyond me.'
'From the nation that conquered the West wearing leather chaps and hats made of dead squirrel,' said the Major. ~ Helen Simonson

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

The only good Indian is a dead Indian ~ William Tecumseh Sherman

Breaking through the cyclical laws of physical nature is the basis of the spiritual process that Adiyogi explored. ~ Sadhguru

I'm not a pacifist by any measure, but I'm also fully aware that the reasons I might go to war could be very dubious. ~ Sherman Alexie

I went to Dartmouth College so simply by being an Indian-American woman, I was already so statistically interesting. And then the fact that I didn't want to do anything science-related, and I wanted to write comedy plays and act little bit - I mean, I became deeply interesting in college because of how rare that was. ~ Mindy Kaling

He said he'd teach her the important things, starting with the most important thing of all, the correct way to make tea and rice, so tea wasn't overbrewed and the rice wasn't overcooked. He said: You want to make food forget Indian way. Indian's system is like American system, everything overdone. They have no subtle. He sent her to buy octopus. She brought the tentacles home in a bag of ice and cut them into thin slices, at a sharp angle. She put the sliced octopus in a saucepan with ginger and green onions and added a black bean paste. He told her to touch the octopus to the flame and serve. But she let the dish cook for a good five minutes until the flesh was tough and rubbery. You overdid, he told her. Old Chinese saying, you don't need take off your pant to fart. ~ Jeet Thayil

I will willingly abandon this miserable body to hunger and suffering, provided that my soul may have its ordinary nourishment. ~ Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

The Americans of the United States do not let their dogs hunt the Indians as do the Spaniards in Mexico, but at bottom it is the same pitiless feeling which here, as everywhere else, animates the European race. This world here belongs to us, they tell themselves every day: the Indian race is destined for final destruction which one cannot prevent and which it is not desirable to delay. Heaven has not made them to become civilized; it is necessary that they die. Besides I do not want to get mixed up in it. I will not do anything against them: I will limit myself to providing everything that will hasten their ruin. In time I will have their lands and will be innocent of their death.
Satisfied with his reasoning, the American goes to church where he hears the minister of the gospel repeat every day that all men are brothers, and that the Eternal Being who has made them all in like image, has given them all the duty to help one another. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

My childhood was pretty colorful; I like to use the word turbulent. But it was a great time to grow up, the '70s and '80s in Brooklyn, East Flatbush. It was culturally diverse: You had Italian culture, American culture, the Caribbean West Indian culture, the Hasidic Jewish culture. Everything was kind of like right there in your face. A lot of violence, you know, especially toward the '80s the neighborhood got really violent, but it made me who I am, it made me strong. ~ Michael K. Williams

Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves. ~ Alan W. Watts

beyond their right - and now they would be made to pay for it. Envy was being acted out, as never before.'62 It led to the murder of six million Jews in the Second World War. Today, I find envy laced through the statements of European and Indian intellectuals about America. Arundhati Roy's essay after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington is an example. Like many anti-American intellectuals writing in the days after the attack, Roy claimed that it was the direct result of American foreign policy - the implication being that America somehow deserved what had happened. There is widespread anti-American sentiment in the world which regards the United States as arrogant, indifferent to human suffering, consumerist, and contemptuous of international law. Much of this is probably correct, but I find that some of it is inspired by envy of America's success. ~ Gurcharan Das

The White Man goes into his church and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tipi and talks with Jesus. ~ Quanah Parker

President Obama met with leaders of the American Indian tribes and they honored the president by giving him his own Indian name: Running Deficits. ~ Jay Leno

It really was a hell of a motorcycle, ..It was arguably the first American motorcycle company, beating Harley by a year or so. Indian was the standard by which everything was gauged. ~ Jerry Springer

This broken country extends back from the river for many miles and has been called always be Indian, French voyager and American trappers alike, the Bad Lands. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Last summer we had eight people in the [Christian] congregation who danced four different sun dances. Of course the missionaries have said all along that those ceremonies are pagan and we can't do that. Our people insist that they are free in the gospel, free in Christ Jesus, to participate in Indian religious forms and ceremonies. - George Tinker ~ Jim Wallis

Kill them. Kill them all. Remind the world what it means to be Arya. Remind the world what it is to walk with the gods.
– Syoddhan Kauravya ~ Krishna Udayasankar

To be an Indian in modern American society is in a very real sense to be unreal and ahistorical. ~ Vine Deloria Jr.

'Indian policy' has now been brought down upon the American people, and the American people are the new Indians of the 21st Century. ~ Russell Means

There had been no crises of incident, or marked movements of experience such as in Felipe's imaginations of love were essential to the fulness of its growth. This is a common mistake on the part of those who have never felt love's true bonds. Once in those chains, one perceives that they are not of the sort full forged in a day. They are made as the great iron cables are made, on which bridges are swung across the widest water-channels,
not of single huge rods, or bars, which would be stronger, perhaps, to look at; but myriads of the finest wires, each one by itself so fine, so frail, it would barely hold a child's kite in the wind: by hundreds, hundreds of thousands of such, twisted, re-twisted together, are made the mighty cables, which do not any more swerve from their place in the air, under the weight and jar of the ceaseless traffic and tread of two cities, than the solid earth swerves under the same ceaseless weight and jar. Such cables do not break. ~ Helen Hunt Jackson

We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not; and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them. ~ Chief Joseph

I'm not an Indian warrior chief. I'm not some demure little Indian woman healer talking spider this, spider that, am I? I'm not babbling about the four directions. Or the two-legged, four-legged, and winged. I'm talking like a twentieth-century Indian woman. Hell, a twenty-first century Indian, and you can't handle it, you wimp. ~ Sherman Alexie

The old Indian teaching was that is is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities ... ~ Wooden Leg

We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life ... ~ Paula Gunn Allen

Never has America lost a war ... But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict. Consider how quickly America seems to be facing its allies of one war as new enemies. ~ Vine Deloria Jr.

Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease and herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence. ~ Mourning Dove

The Trail of Tears has a great deal of meaning for every person of American Indian ancestry, whether they are Cherokee or not. For me, it has always stood for what is best and worst about the history of the United States. ~ Joseph Bruchac

I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one. ~ Crazy Horse

The idea of full dress for 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 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

Elder's Meditation of the Day - February 18
"laughter is a necessity in life that does not cost much, and the Old Ones say that one of the greatest healing powers in our life is the ability to laugh."
Larry P. Aitken, CHIPPEWA
Laughter is a good stress eliminator. Laughter causes healing powers to be distributed through our bodies. Laughter helps heal relationships that are having problems. Laughter can change other people. Laughter can heal the sick. Laughter is spiritual. One of the greatest gifts among Indian people has been our ability to laugh. Humor is natural to Indian people. Sometimes the only thing left to do is laugh.
Great Spirit, allow me to laugh when times get tough. ~ Larry P. Aitken

I guess you hate the people most who make justifiable demands. Because they go to the heart of our psyche. We know they are right, and therefore, we have to destroy them if we can. I think a lot of people are really afraid of justifiable Indian claims to land and resources. They're most afraid of the fact that the claims are morally right, because when you are confronted with a moral imperative against an immoral imperative on your part, you've got to hate the people who assert that moral imperative...We hate them because their claims are totally justified--and we know it. ~ Mary Crow Dog

There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

On the mainland of America, the Wampanoags of Massasoit and King Philip had vanished, along with the Chesapeakes, the Chickahominys, and the Potomacs of the great Powhatan confederacy. (Only Pocahontas was remembered.) Scattered or reduced to remnants were the Pequots, Montauks, Nanticokes. Machapungas, Catawbas, Cheraws, Miamis, Hurons, Eries, Mohawks, Senecas, and Mohegans. (Only Uncas was remembered.) Their musical names remained forever fixed on the American land, but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders. Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself. ~ Dee Brown

According to court records, during the siege at Wounded Knee, more than two hundred and fifty thousand rounds were fired at our people by U.S. marshalls, FBI agents, the tribal police, the GOONs, and white vigilantes. These boys weren't kidding. And neither were we. ~ Leonard Peltier

My parents are proud of their Indian heritage, but they came halfway across the world so their children could be born here, raised here as Americans. They came legally, but they came here in search of the American dream, in search of freedom and opportunity. ~ Bobby Jindal

Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians. ~ Gore Vidal

You gotta understand, my great-grandfather was German and Irish. My grandmother was Indian, and my grandfather was African-American, so we all got a little something in us. ~ Tracy Morgan