John Trudell Quotes

I wasn't interested in having to live with a camera - I have a hard enough time getting along with myself. I don't need cameras around and all that action. ~ John Trudell

Life is all about the spirit. ~ John Trudell

One Earth, one mother - one does not sell the Earth. ~ John Trudell

For us, it's a matter of just staying alive and getting the best deal we can now. Eventually, this will all straighten out. It may be two generations away or 10 generations away, but time is irrelevant in that sense. As long as we, as a people, stay alive, we will survive. ~ John Trudell

You go back and you read your Constitution. You read your Declaration of Independence. And you will see that the only people who could decide these freedoms were white males who owned property, and all the rest of us were excluded. ~ John Trudell

Class is material consumed. ~ John Trudell

I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human. ~ John Trudell

Our bones, flesh and blood are made up of the metals, liquids and minerals of the earth and everything on this planet is made up of the same things. As humans we have being, so everything on the earth does too in our culture, because we are made of the same thing. ~ John Trudell

Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible. ~ John Trudell

A lot of my writing is basically about observation, and things that I've seen, either through personal experiences or the experiences of people around me, or society at large. ~ John Trudell

I have a real interest in working with younger Native artists. I think it's a very important way for Native people to communicate the realities of our culture and remember our ancestors. ~ John Trudell

No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense. ~ John Trudell

There have been some positive things that have happened for the tribes, but it's a constant, vigilant fight about protecting what resources we have in terms of land and rights. ~ John Trudell

This is how you've been imprinted to use your relationship to power - to use it against yourself. Every day we create reality based on what we've been programmed to believe. So we spend most of our lives not really thinking clearly and coherently - not initiated thought. We spend a great deal of our lives not really living, but existing in programmed, reactive belief that we call thought. We can blame the oppressor, the predatory mindset, we can blame it forever and it doesn't mind. It doesn't care. We need to use our energy, our intelligence in an alternative way to the way we have been using it. - John Trudell ~ Kelly Cutrone

Protect your spirit, because you are in the place where spirits get eaten. ~ John Trudell

Before Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had dream of soldiers falling from the sky. ~ John Trudell

I appreciate all of your expressions of concern, and I appreciate all of your expressions of love. It has been like a fire to my heart. ~ John Trudell

When I left politics in the early Eighties and started writing and recording, my idea was that I could have an influence further down into other generations. That Natives could come into the culture through arts and music. ~ John Trudell

The whole point is to take from our native culture and from contemporary culture without using one art form to mimic the other, so that our native identity remains the native identity, the contemporary identity remains the contemporary identity, and the mixing of these two musical identities creates a third musical identity. ~ John Trudell

Whatever their reasons, Hollywood, or the entertainment industry, is saying something about Indians. I don't see the rest of the media knocking down any doors to do that. ~ John Trudell

I think it's the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person ... it's the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can. ~ John Trudell

Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard. ~ John Trudell

As human beings we're living in a reality of industrial madness. ~ John Trudell

All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do. ~ John Trudell

The thing is, it has to do with heart - we have to understand what hearts are for before we can get back to heaven or paradise or the power in our minds. ~ John Trudell

They're called poems but in reality they're lines given to me to hang on to ~ John Trudell

I don't want to tell people how to remember me. I want people to remember me as they remember me. ~ John Trudell

I consider the electric guitar to be like a drum with strings. It became the drum of the Baby Boom generation. And the drum has always been the center of the tribe, a new electronic tribe. ~ John Trudell

Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry. ~ John Trudell

I'm a member of the American Indian Movement, and I'm from the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere. ~ John Trudell

We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the reality of natural rights because all of the natural world has a right to existence and we are only a small part of it. There can be no trade-off. ~ John Trudell

From activist stage, I just spoke and said whatever I had to say. When the writing started, I would just read it. Then I had the interest into going into musical aspects. When that happened in '86, I liked the result of work we did in the studio. ~ John Trudell

I have experienced within my own lifetime the attack of my winter camp and the killing of the women and children. It left me even angrier than I was - and I was never too calm to begin with. ~ John Trudell

We have power ... Our power isn't in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems ... they have power ... but it's not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings. ~ John Trudell

My influences in this world have always been Crazy Horse and Malcolm X, my overall influences. But I was influenced by rock n' roll, blues, and country music. I was influenced by singers. ~ John Trudell

Don't trust anyone who isn't angry. ~ John Trudell

It's like there is this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds on the essence of the spirit. ~ John Trudell

The great lie is that it is civilization. It's not civilized. It has been literally the most blood thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. That's the great lie, is that it represents civilization. ~ John Trudell

Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music. ~ John Trudell

We cannot change the political system, we cannot change the economic system, we cannot change the social system, until the people control the land, and then we take it out of the hands of that sick minority that chooses to pervert the meaning and the intention of humanity. ~ John Trudell

All politics to me - Indian or white - is an illusion preventing us from being authentic because we're communicating through something that isn't real to us. ~ John Trudell

It's always good to go home. It's strengthening to see your past and know you have someplace to go where you're part of a people. ~ John Trudell

Everybody interprets things differently with their own perception, and I want poetry to pull out of them their own feelings. ~ John Trudell

Do you have any problems, other than that you're unemployed, a moron, and a dork? ~ John McEnroe

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful. ~ John Green

Westlemania is the Superbowl but each PPV is equally important. The big four (WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, SummerSlam and Survivor Series) are always important to me but the themed events have been getting better each year. Each event has its own aura around it so it's very difficult to choose. ~ John Cena

There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. ~ John F. Kerry

We need not forgive ourselves," he (Augustus) said. "It has been a marriage. It has been better than most. ~ John Williams

Therefore, Sir Walter, what I would take leave to suggest is, that if in consequence of any rumours getting abroad of your intention; which must be contemplated as a possible thing, because we know how difficult it is to keep the actions and designs of one part of the world from the notice and curiosity of the other; consequence has its tax; I, John Shepherd, might conceal any family-matters that I chose, for nobody would think it worth their while to observe me; but Sir Walter Elliot has eyes upon him which it may be very difficult to elude; and therefore, thus much I venture upon, that it will not greatly surprise me if, with all our caution, some rumour of the truth should get abroad; in the supposition of which, as I was going to observe, since applications will unquestionably follow, I should think any from our wealthy naval commanders particularly worth attending to; and beg leave to add, that two hours will bring me over at any time, to save you the trouble of replying. ~ Jane Austen

I wanted to hate Jake, of course, but as I watched them together, smiling and fumbling all over each other, I didn't hate him. I wanted to be him, sure, but I tried to remember I was ostensibly on a date with someone else. ~ John Green

Eating a Paleolithic diet is not about historical re-enactment; it is about mimicking the effect of such a diet on the metabolism with foods available at the supermarket. There was no one diet eaten throughout the entire Paleolithic, nor is there a single diet eaten by contemporary hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer diets can vary substantially depending on the geography, season, and culture. Even so, the commonalities among hunter-gatherer diets provide useful parameters for a healthy modern diet. ~ John Durant

You have made your magic now ~ Arthur Miller

Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass. [Said to Senator John Stennis (D-MS) during debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1957] ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied. ~ John Steinbeck

Poetry is that magic which consists in awakening sensations with the help of a combination of sounds ... that sorcery by which ideas are necessarily communicated to us, in a definite way, by words which nevertheless do not express them. ~ John Banville

The Middle East Media Research Institute has spent decades detailing the diseased messages emanating from Palestinian TV and textbooks, instructing children in the glories of suicide terrorism against innocent Israelis. ~ John Podhoretz

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. ~ John Lubbock

We can say that true gratitude does not give rise to the debtor's ethic because it gives rise to faith in future grace. With true gratitude there is such a delight in the worth of God's past grace, that we are driven on to experience more and more of it in the future ... it is done by transforming gratitude into faith as it turns from contemplating the pleasures of past grace and starts contemplating the promises of the future. ~ John Piper

I sat smiling wretchedly, my heart weeping for The Little Dog Laughed, for every well-turned phrase, for the little flecks of poetry through it, my first story, the best thing I could show for my whole life. It was the record of all that was good in me, approved and printed by the great J. C. Hackmuth, and she had torn it up and thrown it into a spittoon. ~ John Fante

My canvas soothes me into forgetfulness of the scene of turmoil and folly - and worse - of the scene around me. Every gleam of sunshine is blighted to me in the art at least. Can it therefore be wondered at that I paint continual storms? "Tempest o'er tempest roll'd" - still the "darkness" is majestic. ~ John Constable

Let us be peaceable as near as we can: let us relent of our own right: let us not strive for these worldly goods, honour and reputation: let us bear all wrongs and outrages, rather than be moved to any debate through our own fault. But in the meanwhile, let us fight for God's truth with tooth and nail. ~ John Calvin

Christian wife! Follow in the footsteps of the ideal of all womanhood, the Blessed Mother of God; in joy and in sorrow, she will be your advocate at the throne of her Son. ~ John Vianney

The crime of a bad example is the same whether men follow it or not, because he that gives bad example to others, does what in him lies to draw them into sin; and if they do not follow it, that is no mitigation of his fault. ~ John Tillotson

Were our affections filled, taken up, and possessed with these things ... what access could sin, with its painted pleasures, with its sugared poisons, with its envenomed baits, have unto our souls? ~ John Owen

The only person you resent is yourself. ~ John Hewson

What honour that, But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear So many hollow compliments and lies. ~ John Milton

A soul without a center feels constantly vulnerable to people or circumstances. ~ John Ortberg

My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it. ~ John Keats

Parents took honor from a daughter who was a teacher. ~ John Steinbeck

Not seeing the divine glory of Christ in the gospel is blameworthy. It is not an innocent blindness, but a culpable love of darkness. "They ~ John Piper

Major league baseball players and owners should meet immediately to enact the standards that apply to the minor leagues, and if they don't, I will have to introduce legislation that says professional sports will have minimum standards for testing. I'll give them until January, and then I'll introduce legislation. ~ John McCain

As far back as I remember, and earlier, I was an artisan, a maker and doer. Mechanically minded, my parents said. ~ John Sulston

All school districts receive funds from the federal government, through the Department of Education, to support anti-drug education efforts. ~ John Walters

Buzzards don't make good friends. They always have an interior motive. ~ John R. Erickson

Washburn's an old American name, but this one was assembled overseas. ~ John Fogerty

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne. ~ John Podhoretz

I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at. ~ John Grisham

Others are ahead of me. I am continually challenged. My focus is forward. The atmosphere is affirming. I am often out of my comfort zone. I wake up excited. Failure is not my enemy. Others are growing. People desire change. Growth is modeled and expected. ~ John C. Maxwell

One of the most painful aspects of suffering is the loneliness of it. Others may offer support or empathy, but no one can walk the road to Moriah in our place. ~ John Ortberg

Goe and catche a falling starre, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all past yeares are, Or who cleft the Divel's foot. Teach me to hear Mermaides' singing, Or to keep of envies stinging, And finde What winde Serves to advance an honest minde. ~ John Donne

That gloomy outside, like a rusty chest, contains the shoring treasure of a soul resolved and brave. ~ John Dryden

Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry. ~ John Wesley