Iroquois Confederacy Quotes

I sat at a lunch table with a professor of premonotheistic spirituality, plus several women from some of the tribes in this state that has more Native Americans than any other. All agreed that the paradigm of human organization had been the circle, not the pyramid or hierarchy - and it could be again.

I'd never known there was a paradigm that linked instead of ranked. It was as if I'd been assuming opposition - and suddenly found myself in a welcoming world; like putting one's foot down for a steep stair and discovering level ground.

Still, when a Laguna law student from New Mexico complained that her courses didn't cite the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution - or explain that this still existing Confederacy was the oldest continuing democracy in the world - I thought she was being romantic. But I read about the Constitutional Convention and discovered that Benjamin Franklin had indeed cited the Iroquois Confederacy as a model. He was well aware of its success in unifying vast areas of the United States and Canada by bringing together Native nations for mutual decisions but also allowing autonomy in local ones. He hoped the Constitution could do the same for the thirteen states. That's why he invited two Iroquois men to Philadelphia as advisers. Among their first questions was said to be: Where are the women? ~ Gloria Steinem

The model for the U.S. Constitution was not ancient Greece but the Iroquois Confederacy. Then, ~ Gloria Steinem

In 1988, the Senate passed a Resolution "To acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the development of the United States Constitution," which included affirmations that "the original framers of the Constitution, including, most notably, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly admired the concepts of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy" and "the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself. ~ Peter Manseau

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

For almost one hundred years, leaders of the white South managed to freeze race relations and racial ideology in something close to the Confederate pattern, thus demonstrating that the passage of time by itself does not erase a conflicted past. Elite southern men and women created an ideology of the Lost Cause that wrapped antebellum society, the Confederacy, Reconstruction, and postwar racism in the mantle of a protective, laudatory myth. The Lost Cause portrayed the white South as cultured, chivalrous, and superior while making the North into the aggressor - crude, unprincipled, and vindictive.

[...] Even after 1900 the Lost Cause ideology continued to gain strength under the leadership of a new generation, until most southern whites came to believe that their history and the myth were identical [75 - 76]. ~ Paul D. Escott

For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself ~ Thomas Hobbes

The love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans; the enjoyment of it, their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment the most pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained the honourable epithet of Franks or Freemen; which concealed, though it did not extinguish, the peculiar names of the several states of the confederacy. ~ Edward Gibbon

Among the Founders, Thomas Jefferson wrote about race at greatest length. He thought blacks were mentally inferior to whites and biologically distinct: "[They] secrete less by the kidnies [sic], and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a strong and disagreeable odor." He hoped slavery would be abolished, but he did not want free blacks to remain in America: "When freed, [the Negro] is to be removed from beyond the reach of mixture."
Jefferson was one of the first and most influential advocates of "colonization," or returning blacks to Africa. He also believed in the destiny of whites as a racially distinct people. In 1786 he wrote, "Our Confederacy [the United States] must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled."
In 1801 he looked forward to the day "when our rapid multiplication will expand itself . . . over the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface. ~ Jared Taylor

The Iroquois take dreams very seriously. They see them as the secret wishes of the soul
the heart's desire, so to speak. Not all dreams, maybe, but the important ones. [p.254] ~ Kim Edwards

Let's say Twitter existed during the Civil War. We would have a better understanding of people in the Confederacy who were against slavery, people in the North who actually felt we should just let the South be the South. Because the way it is now, it seems like we have this portrait where everybody in Georgia hated Yankees and everybody in the North was enlightened. That wouldn't seem as clear cut as it does now. ~ Chuck Klosterman

It was a running joke among the shipping industry - if the people of the nation had to choose between weapons or coffee, the Confederacy would end at the Canadian border. ~ Robert Edward

We are these people,
wistful, ironical, wilful,
who have no part in
new-world reconstruction,
in the confederacy of labour. ~ Hilda Doolittle

Whatever the reason for enlisting, by 1865 the Union had sworn in 2,128,948 men, approximately one-third of the military-age male population of the northern states, while the Confederacy probably enrolled a little under 1 million men, about four-fifths of its military-age male population. ~ Allen C. Guelzo

The constitution of human nature" teaches us not to expect "that the persons, entrusted with the administration of the affairs of the particular members of a confederacy, will at all times be ready, with perfect good humor, and an unbiased regard to the public weal, to execute the resolutions of decrees of the general authority." "This tendency is not difficult to be accounted for," Publius argues, "It has its origin in the love of power. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives' families. Each extended family lived in a "long house." When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband's things outside the door. ~ Howard Zinn

The Society of North American Magic Realists welcomes its newest, most dazzling member, Louis Maistros. His debut novel is a thing of wonder, unlike anything in our literature. It startles. It stuns. It stupefies. No novel since CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES has done such justice to New Orleans. If Franz Kafka had been able to write like Peter Straub, this might have been the result. ~ Donald Harington

Earlier in the morning Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines had attacked eastward into the ruins of Shuri Castle and had raised the Confederate flag. When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered loudly. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn't know what to do. Later we learned that the Stars and Stripes that had flown over Guadalcanal were raised over Shuri Castle, a fitting tribute to the men of the 1st Marine Division who had the honor of being first into the Japanese citadel. ~ Eugene B. Sledge

The fear had precedent. Toward the end of the Civil War, having witnessed the effectiveness of the Union's 'colored troops,' a flailing Confederacy began considering an attempt to recruit blacks into its army. But in the nineteenth century, the idea of the soldier was heavily entwined with the notion of masculinity and citizenship. How could an army constituted to defend slavery, with all of its assumptions about black inferiority, turn around and declare that blacks were worthy of being invited into Confederate ranks? As it happened, they could not. 'The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of our revolution,' observed Georgia politician Howell Cobb. 'And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.' There could be no win for white supremacy here. If blacks proved to be the cowards that 'the whole theory of slavery' painted them as, the battle would be lost. But much worse, should they fight effectively--and prove themselves capable of 'good Negro government'--then the larger war could never be won. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

All the figures who upheld and defended American slavery - Senators John C. Calhoun and Stephen Douglas, President James Buchanan, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, architect of the Dred Scott decision, and the main leaders of the Confederacy - were Democrats. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

I like characters like Ignatius Reilly in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' and Ricky Gervais's character in 'The Office.' They think one thing about themselves, but the truth is as far from that as it can be. So I began to think about how to put that kind of character in a book for kids. ~ Stephan Pastis

From infancy, I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession. ~ Emmeline Pankhurst

If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory. ~ Jefferson Davis

Our country presents on every side the evidences of that continued favor under whose auspices it, has gradually risen from a few feeble and dependent colonies to a prosperous and powerful confederacy. ~ Martin Van Buren

There is often no material difference between the enjoyment of the highest ranks and those of the rudest stages of society. If the life of many a young English nobleman, and an Iroquois in the forest, or an Arab in the desert are compared, it will be found that their real sources of happiness are nearly the same. ~ Sir Archibald Alison, 2nd Baronet

Neither these statesmen nor their constituents sought in any way to use the Government for the interest of themselves or their section, or for the injury of a single member of the Confederacy. ~ Robert Toombs

They still possess virtues which might cause shame to most Christians. No hospitals are needed among them, because there are neither mendicants nor paupers as long as there are any rich people among them. Their kindness, humanity, and courtesy not only make them liberal with what they have, but cause them to possess hardly anything except in common. A whole village must be without corn before any individual can be obliged to endure privation. They divide the produce of their fisheries equally with all who come ~ Reuben Gold Thwaites

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

There are among us those that would criticize our Confederate ancestors. Would you allow a stranger to come into your house and criticize your little ones? I say it's not whether we should be ashamed of our fathers and mothers of the Old Confederacy. I say it's a question of whether they should be ashamed of us. ~ Calvin Johnson

Jail was preferable. There they only limited you physically. In a mental ward they tampered with your soul and worldview and mind. ~ John Kennedy Toole

I think slavery was an awful, awful period in our history, but when I look at what's become of black culture since emancipation, I think you have to admit, maybe the Confederacy was on to something ~ Zach Braff

Instead of revering a four-year brief historical aberration that was called the Confederacy we can celebrate all 300 years of our rich, diverse history as a place named New Orleans and set the tone for the next 300 years. ~ Mitch Landrieu

Propaganda is a weapon that the Confederacy wields best, and wields heaviest. It is their hammer. And when all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. ~ Jeff Grubb

You can do but one of these things; it is folly to attempt anything else, for there cannot exist a slave confederacy and a free confederacy side by side upon this continent. ~ John Brough

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Max asked, 'Why death, do you think?'
'The Iroquois say that the world was too full, so the men and women got together, separately, to find an answer. The men came up with the idea of not having any more children. But the women refused to give up having babies. Death was their answer.'
Max nodded. He took a deep breath. It felt like he hadn't breathed like that in month, maybe years. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Flag committee chairman Miles did not agree with that sentiment. He opposed adoption of this design and wrote:"There is no propriety in retaining the ensign of a government which, in the opinion of the States composing this Confederacy, had become so oppressive and injurious to their interests as to require their separation from it.It is idle to talk of 'keeping' the flag of the United States when we have voluntarily seceded from them. ~ Clint Johnson