Tribal Quotes

When resources are degraded, we start competing for them, whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources. ~ Wangari Maathai

We found a great rhythm. Contractions started kicking in. I sat there with her, right between her legs. We got tribal on it, we danced to it! I was DJ-ing this Brazilian music. ~ Matthew McConaughey

We know one another's faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws. ~ Rose Macaulay

As a legal text, the Qur'an reflects its origins in a tribal or clan-based society, particularly on issues concerning inheritance, male guardianship, the validity of a woman's testimony in court, and polygamy. This is even more obvious in the hadith, the compilation of sayings attributed to the Prophet or documenting his actions. This combination of the Qur'an and the example of Muhammad forms the basis of sharia. The derivation of these legal rules, known as fiqh, is the responsibility of Islamic jurists and takes place on the basis of ijma (consensus). When conflicts of interpretation arise, scholars consult the Qur'an and hadith. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Unlike some mainland black groups, Tasmanian Aborigines now have no traditional tribal culture left. It was taken from them with great violence and great rapidity. ~ Richard Flanagan

When the tribal groups of december trade
Seated in the figure of crocodile
And songs are sung and deals discussed, are made
Real. All ... For more than one reason they smile.
These codes are writ in secret, feeling fine
To keep what's private to my self since we
All must face our maker in our own ryhme
And reasons for being ( from regrets) free
So let the memory of your glory
Be the tenderness heartfelt love starkly
In the sky of my mind vast and pretty
Evermore glittering simplicity
Where in the truth of country grows sober
And sunshines through fog to radiate wonder ~ John Armstrong

The only religion which seems to have a function in time of war is the tribal religion which invokes a God as the exclusive protector of the nation which calls upon him. ~ Joseph Alexander Leighton

Brahmin who'd learned the tribal dialects. He refused ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

That law that created the native corporations was the idea of tanik American corporations to undermine tribal integrity." "What do you mean?" Bertie asks. "Everywhere else in the U.S., tribes have their own government, their own land, and their own money." "They have a monopoly on casinos, you mean," Bertie says cautiously. "Whatever it is. Our tribes in Alaska don't have nothing. It's the native corporations who have all the land and the money, and they're the ones making decisions." "But don't you think they're making decisions in the best interests of their shareholders, the native people?" "They're just making money for their shareholders like any other corporation," Mandy says. "And they hire taniks in Anchorage offices to carry out their business. They don't care about whether people up here are taking their dividends and drinking them away. I hate to say it, but I got to agree with Luther. It's a long, slow genocide, all done under the corporations' laws. ~ Elizaveta Ristrova

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris. ~ Mason Cooley

Irish politics are tribal, incestuous, tangled and furtive, incomprehensible even to many of the people involved. ~ Tana French

Every year, I travel extensively in the autumn and the spring. I set most of the winter and summer aside for my family and my own tribal relatives. But during that traveling time, I often find myself visiting other native communities around the continent - perhaps a dozen or more each year. ~ Joseph Bruchac

We live in perilous times and at crossroads. On the one hand, we risk our extinction and that of our planet because of the devastating combination of ancient tribal habits and modern technologies that have the ability to obliterate every living being on the planet several times over. On the other hand, we also possess a nervous system through which the universe is becoming self-aware. More than ever, we have the means and insight to create a brave new world in which our current stage of survival of the fittest can evolve to one of survival of the wisest. The road we choose will determine our future. ~ Deepak Chopra

To start here, in the United States. This country was the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as a rational product of man's mind. This country was built on the supremacy of reason - and, for one magnificent century, it redeemed the world. It will have to do so again. ~ Ayn Rand

The TV generation is postliterate and retribalized. It seeks by violence to scrub the old private image and to merge in a new tribal identity, like any corporate executive. ~ Marshall McLuhan

The United States always seems to have a way of playing the international cop of the world. ~ Jason Medina

In recent years, the choice of drugs on these reservations and throughout my district has been methamphetamines. It has destroyed the rule of law among the reservation people. It is killing our tribal youth in this country. ~ Rick Renzi

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview. ~ Wilma Mankiller

The scriptures of all three of the great monotheisms show that they began similarly as popular movements in protest against the privilege and arrogance of power, whether that of kings as in the Hebrew bible, or the Roman Empire as in the Gospels, or a tribal elite as in the Quran. All three, that is, were originally driven by ideals of justice and egalitarianism, rejecting the inequities of human power in favor of a higher and more just one. ~ Lesley Hazleton

Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.' ~ Henry Hazlitt

My style is clubby and groovy - you can jump to it, but you don't just have to just jump to it. It's not just really bass-heavy and hurts your ears; you move with it, and it sounds kind of tribal. ~ Ansel Elgort

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me. ~ Cat Power

The '60s were a very turbulent time for colored people. Being away at war was a chance for them to escape the racial bullshit for a while. It was a shame it came down to that kind of choice.
Don't get me wrong. There were plenty of guys, who tried to bring that racial crap over there with them. However, when the shit hits the fan, you don't give a damn about who's standing next to you, saving your ass. You certainly don't care what color his skin is or what language he speaks. All that matters to you is that he is an American G.I. Government Issued, baby! ~ Jason Medina

Many of the racial problems in America are caused by the fact that people are innately tribal, and politicians know how to exploit that biological fact. ~ Jim Goad

Instead, the lesson is that false beliefs, once they've become culturally entrenched - once they've become tribal badges of honor - are very difficult to change, and changing them is no longer simply a matter of educating people. ~ Joshua D. Greene

Politics' the polite word for antediluvian prejudices, the rags put on by enmity and tribal resentment. ~ Joseph O'Connor

My first meeting as a senator, my first day, they were already talking about the next election. Part of that's the permanent campaign, part of that's a word I've been using more frequently, 'tribal.' Our politics has become tribal: It's us versus them. ~ Evan Bayh

My dad taught me from my youngest childhood memories through these connections with Aboriginal and tribal people that you must always protect people's sacred status, regardless of the past. ~ Steve Irwin

It's all tribal. ~ Bella Bloom

There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. ~ Edith Wharton

Many Afghan intellectuals in the United States believe that their country is best kept together. They are encouraged by the fact that no leading tribal or political figure there has called for secession. ~ Stephen Kinzer

Oh, no, no, you've got that all wrong. You're not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they're idiots. Especially if they're idiots. You can't just abandon your old people, even if they have nothing intelligent to say. Even if they're crazy. ~ Sherman Alexie

In my experience conservatives hate reporters mainly because they see us as phonies. We reject the idea that we belong to a class, or that we have our own tribal beliefs. Sometimes the hypocrisy is something they've seen - upper-class liberals, railing about racism in the heartland from the comfort of an all-white suburban town, where they occasionally tip a Puerto Rican gardener or hire a Republican plumber. But a lot of it has to do with approach and tone, the way we openly write for and celebrate professional-sect audiences, unlike the columnists of the past, the Mike Roykos or Jack Newfields, who were unembarrassed to write in the language of the working person. ~ Matt Taibbi

A primordial instinct going back to humanity's tribal past makes us see difference as a threat. That instinct is massively dysfunctional in an age in which our several destinies are interlinked. Oddly enough, it is the market -- the least overtly spiritual of concepts -- that delivers a profoundly spiritual message: that it is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a curse. When difference leads to war, both sides lose. When it leads to mutual enrichment, both sides gain. ~ Jonathan Sacks

I wish I were a bird. I'd fly all the way up to the clouds and look down on this place, and then I'd go far away and never come back. ~ Jason Medina

How can scholars continue to honor the unique and important histories of individual tribal nations and Indian communities while simultaneously drawing attention to ways that the nineteenth-century Native experiences shaped the United States in profound ways? ~ C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa

When a child becomes an adult ... the elders are fearful. And for good reason ... not we but they are the germinators of future generations. Will they leave us behind as we did our parents? Consign us to neatly paved retirement villages? Trample us in the dust as they go flying out to their new galaxies? We had better tie them down, flagellate them, isolate them in the family cocoon, ... indoctrinate them into the tribal laws and make sure they kneel before the power of the elders. ~ Louise J. Kaplan

Humanity has understood nothing. Religious, tribal, national wars continue. The world continues to be in a sea of blood. ~ Irena Sendler

I love that I am but one of millions of single girls hitting the road by themselves these days. A hateful little ex-boyfriend once said that a houseful of cats used to be the sign of a terminally single woman, but not it's a house full of souvenirs acquired on foreign adventures. He said it derogatorily: Look at all of this tragic overcompensating in the form of tribal masks and rain sticks. But I say that plane tickets replacing cats might be the best evidence of women's progress as a gender. I'm damn proud of us. Also, since I have both a cat and a lot of foreign souvenirs, I broke up with that dude and went on a really great trip. ~ Kristin Newman

Post office closures in the Dakotas and Minnesota will impact many communities, but the White Earth reservation villages, and other tribal towns of Squaw Lake, Ponemah, Brookston in Minnesota, and Manderson, Wounded Knee and Wakpala (South Dakota) as well as Mandaree in North Dakota will mean hardships for a largely Native community. ~ Winona LaDuke

Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. "No other nation," he wrote in Diplomacy, "has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism." Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable. ~ Walter Isaacson

The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved - by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us courage to face the Minotaur, and the means then to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain? ~ Joseph Campbell

The Abenaki also believe that there are some people who live between the animal world and the human world, never fully belonging to either one. ~ Jodi Picoult

Harris: Yes. In fact, self-deception might have paid evolutionary dividends in other ways. Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all - and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature. Now, clearly many things may have been adaptive for our ancestors - such as tribal warfare, rape, xenophobia - that we now deem unethical and would never want to defend. But I'm wondering if you see any possibility that a social system that maximizes truth-telling could be one that fails to maximize the well-being of all participants. Is it possible that some measure of deception is good for us? ~ Sam Harris

Once you start rummaging around in the realm of the unverifiable there is considerable room for creativity, and accusations of sorcery are often blended with self-serving motives. Tribal people, anthropologists have shown, often single out despised in-laws for allegations of witchcraft, a convenient ~ Steven Pinker

Definitely, a non-tribal can become chief minister in Jharkhand. ~ Kariya Munda

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, '
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories

whose architecture is 15,000 years older
than the corners of the house that sits
museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, '
the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? '

and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break
her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds
on my little reservation out West
and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane,

the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, '
I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit
about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories
around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born

and before his grandparents' grandparents were born.
I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too,
because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters
and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place

then nothing would need to be saved.'
But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden
Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted
that I thought to b ~ Sherman Alexie

Because it's unacceptable that the aid worker's chauffeur only speaks his own tribal language, an applicant is needed who also speaks English fluently - and, ideally, one who is also well mannered. So you end up with some African biochemist driving an aid worker around, distributing European food, and forcing local farmers out of their jobs. That's just crazy! ~ James Shikwati

There are many sides to this difficult problem. And people persist in discussing soil-erosion, and tribal decay, and lack of schools, and crime, as though they were all parts of the matter. If you think long enough about it, you will be brought to consider republics, and bilingualism, and immigration, and Palestine, and God knows what. So in a way it is best not to think about it at all. ~ Alan Paton

The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list. ~ John Derbyshire

There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music. ~ Edward Hirsch

Such moments are too often lost, the private interludes between the tribal gatherings, the transit between destinations, when the city becomes an intimate landscape, a secret shared by two. This was once their neighborhood and she wants to reclaim it for a little while, to walk past the apartment where they spent so much of their lives, even if it makes her sad thinking of all that transpired there, and all that's lost. It makes her melancholy to imagine that she might never be here again, that these blocks, their former haunts, and their old building will outlast them; that the city is supremely indifferent to their transit through its arteries, and to their ultimate destination. For now, she wants just to be in between. She knows that later it won't be the party she will remember so much as this, the walk with her husband in the crisp autumn air, bathed in the yellow metropolitan light spilling from thousands of windows, this suspended moment of anticipation before arrival. ~ Jay McInerney

A two thousand years old culture is being replaced by Arab Bedouin culture in the name of Islam. Cheegha, The Call is a lone voice against the threat to the tribal way of life, the ways of the fathers. ~ Ghulam Qadir Khan Daur

The sky was overcast with thick, grey clouds drifting in the direction of Idasa. That meant rain. It would come, as long as the clouds drifted in that direction. Lightening flashes momentarily parted the clouds...Shango, the god of lightening and thunder, was registering his anger as this strange talk of a new God is taking hold of simple folk who were once unquestioning votaries of his order. The new malady must be nipped in the bud. ~ T.M. Aluko

Drugs have a long history of use in magic in various cultures, and usually in the context of either ecstatic communal rituals or in personal vision quests. However compared to people in simple pastoral tribal situations most people in developed countries now live in a perpetual state of mental hyperactivity with overactive imaginations anyway, so throwing drugs in on top of this usually just leads to confusion and a further loss of focus.
Plus as the real Shamans say, if you really do succeed in opening a door with a drug it will thereafter open at will and most such substances give all they will ever give on the first attempt. ~ Peter J. Carroll

We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters ... ~ E. O. Wilson

Sometimes you run into someone, regardless of age or sex, whom you know absolutely to be an independently operating part of the Whole that goes on all the time inside yourself, and the eye-motes go click and you hear the tribal tones of voice resonate, and there it is - you recognize them. ~ Anne Lamott

Southerners. Such literate, civilized folk, such charm and cleverness and passion for living, such genuine interest in people, all people, high and low, white and black, and yet how often it had come to, came to, was still coming to vicious incomprehension, usually over race but other things too - religion, class, money. How often the lowest elements had burst out of the shadows and hollers, guns and torches blazing, galloping past the educated and tolerant as nightriders, how often the despicable had run riot over the better Christian ideals... how often cities had burned, people had been strung up in trees, atrocities had been permitted to occur and then, in the seeking of justice for those outrages, how slippery justice had proven, how delayed its triumph. Oh you expect such easily obtained violence in the Balkans or among Asian or African tribal peoples centuries-deep in blood feuds, but how was there such brutality and wickedness in this place of church and good intention, a place of immense friendliness and charity and fondness for the rituals of family and socializing, amid the nation's best cooking and best music... how could one place contain the other place? ~ Wilton Barnhardt

We are world citizens, but tribal chiefs won't let us cross the frontier ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

I know "professional" historians like to talk about how Yonkers represented a "catastrophic failure of the modern military apparatus," how it proved the old adage that armies perfect the art of fighting the last war just in time for the next one. Personally, I think that's a big 'ole sack of it. Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn't something that rolled off an assembly line. It's as old as…I don't know, I guess as old as war. It's fear, dude, just fear and you don't have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn't about killing or even hurting the other guy, it's about scaring him enough to call it a day. Break their spirit, that's what every successful army goes for, from tribal face paint to the "blitzkrieg" to…what did we call the first round of Gulf War Two, "Shock and Awe"? Perfect name, "Shock and Awe"! But what if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't! That's what happened that day outside New York City, that's the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn't shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They're not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~ Max Brooks

The only way to survive in a community where movement was the norm and material accumulation impractical was to maintain a strong sense on tribal solidarity by evenly sharing all available resources. ~ Reza Aslan

As an adult, I've always found the stereotype that Jews are liberal a curious one; my parents' circle was predominantly conservative, not just on Israel but on most political issues. Most of all, they were intensely (and this is a word I remember repeating in my own angry adolescent dialogues with myself) tribal. ~ Rick Perlstein

White, is not a race, it is a color, European, is not a race, it is a place named after the goddess Europa. Caucasian, is not a race, it is a place and mountain range. Gentile, is not a race, it is a biblical name that was given to describe Aryans as non-Jews. Aryan is the biological correct name of our race! Aryan is who we are by blood and the genetic source of our being and beginning. All the numerous names, German, French, Irish, Scotch, Polish, Italian, Norwegian and on and on are simply the many tribal names of the Aryan people. ~ Ron McVan

That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere. ~ Ben Kingsley

People, fearing their own extinction, are willing to accept and perpetuate hand-me-down answers to the meaning of life and death; and, fearing a weakening of the tribal structures that sustain them, reinforce with their tales the conventional notions of justice, freedom, law and order, nature, family, etc. The writer, lone rider, has the power, if not always the skills, wisdom, or desire, to disturb this false contentment. ~ Robert Coover

I've known a lot of gypsies and they are strange enough. But so are we. The difference is we have to make an honest living. Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods where the people lived that we came from. All we know is that we do not know. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Across the dying fire, Seth Clearwater - his eyes wide with adulation for the fraternity of tribal protectors- nodded his agreement. ~ Stephenie Meyer

It's a tribal state, and it always will be. Whether we like it or not, whenever we withdraw from Afghanistan, whether it's now or years from now, we'll have an incendiary situation. Should we stay and play traffic cop? I don't think that serves our strategic interests. ~ Jon Huntsman, Jr.

I am not a hero, and definitely not a messiah or a political leader and no, I am not a prophet - you know what I am - I am an idiot who thinks that all humans should think of themselves as humans above their tribal labels - I am just a fool, passing through time and space, being an embodiment of help, harmony and humanity. ~ Abhijit Naskar

No medicine man these days can afford to be without a portable tape recorder. Without the aid of this modern device, which may be easily concealed in the undergrowth of the jungle, the old tribal authority will rapidly become undermined by the mounting influenece of modern skepticism. ~ Muriel Spark

The single most important takeaway from Stage Four is that Tribal Leaders follow the core values of the tribe no matter what the cost. ~ Dave Logan

Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds or commit unspeakable atrocities, even when those gods are not gods but "tribal honor" or "genetic imperatives" or "social ideals" or "human
destiny" or "liberal democracy." Then again, men also kill on account of money, land, love, pride, hatred, envy, or ambition. They kill out of conviction or out of lack of conviction. Harris ~ David Bentley Hart

… not only the women of the Qurashi aristocracy were highly enough esteemed as a social group to come, like the men, to swear allegiance and to take part in the negotiations with the new military leader of the city, but also that they could express a boldly critical attitude toward Islam. They were not going to accept the new religion without knowing exactly how it would improve their situation. This critical spirit on the part of women toward the political leader remained alive and well during the first decades of Islam. It only disappeared with the onset of absolutism, with Mu'awiya and the turning of Islam into a dynastic system. This meant, on the one hand, the disappearance of the tribal aristocratic spirit with the formation of the Muslim state, and, on the other hand, the disappearance of Islam as the Prophet's experiment in living, in which equality, however merely potential it might be, opened the door to the dream of a practicing democracy. ~ Fatema Mernissi

There are those who are trying hard to do something about these threats, and others who are acting to escalate them. If you, this future historian or extraterrestrial observer, looked at who is in each group, you would see something strange indeed: those trying to mitigate or overcome these threats are the least developed societies - the indigenous populations, or the remnants of them; tribal societies; and first nations in Canada. They're not talking about nuclear war but environmental disaster, and they're really trying to do something about it. ~ Noam Chomsky

In their best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; ~ David Brooks

The genocide [in Rwanda] was not a spontaneous eruption of tribal hatred, it was planned by people wanting to keep power. There was a long government-led hat campaign against the Tutsis. ~ Jonathan Glover

But happiness is a difficult thing-it is, as Aristotle posited in The Nicomachean Ethics, an activity, is is about good social behavior, about being a solid citizen. Happiness is about community, intimacy, relationships, rootedness, closeness, family, stability, a sense of place, a feeling of love. And in this country, where people move from state to state and city to city so much, where rootlessness is almost a virtue ("anywhere I hang my hat ... is someone else's home"), where family units regularly implode and leave behind fragments of divorce, where the long loneliness of life finds its antidote not in a hardy, ancient culture (as it would in Europe), not in some blood-deep tribal rites (as it would in the few still-hale Third World nations), but in our vast repository of pop culture, of consumer goods, of cotton candy for all-in this America, happiness is hard. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

Our audience is young and vibrant; we retain our previous following; we are three generations into it. Unlike other bands that are very demographically specific, who they appeal to and who their fans are, we're the antithesis of that. If you see your younger brother or a parent of yours or a neighbor at most rock concerts, that's not cool but with us and kids, it's a tribal gathering. Whether it's kids or neighbors - they're all part of a secret society. ~ Paul Stanley

For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music. ~ Eugenio Montale

All knowledge that takes special training to acquire is the province of the Magician energy. Whether you are an apprentice training to become a master electrician and unraveling the mysteries of high voltage; or a medical student, grinding away night and day, studying the secrets of the human body and using available technologies to help your patients; or a would-be stockbroker or a student of high finance; or a trainee in one of the psychoanalytic schools, you are in exactly the same position as the apprentice shaman or witch doctor in tribal societies. You are spending large amounts of time, energy, and money in order to be initiated into rarefied realms of secret power. You are undergoing an ordeal testing your capacities to become a master of this power. And, as is true in all initiations, there is no guarantee of success. [Magician energy] ~ Robert Moore

Tattoo. What a loaded word it is, rife with associations to goons, goofs, bikers, tribal warriors, carnival artists, drunken sailors and floozies. ~ Jon Anderson

I have a poorly done tribal armband that i got when i was 16, i love showing it to people because it totally sucks ~ Jade Puget

The richness of our ethnic insults vocabulary was wide and deep. It reflected, all too easily, the more elaborate predjiduces of our parents (not my parents), which in their rabid form, had already resulted in tribal bloodbaths. ~ Andrei Codrescu

Before the rise of the nation-state, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them. ~ Robert Reich

I am extremely conscious of my tribalism. And when you talk about tribalism, you talk about living in a black and white world. I mean, Native American tribalism sovereignty, even the political fight for sovereignty and cultural sovereignty is a very us versus them. And I think a lot of people in this country, especially European Americans and those descended from Europeans don't see themselves as tribal. ~ Sherman Alexie

The gods we make in our own image are tribal gods. They tell you how very, very little you should tolerate outsiders, who are less favoured of the Lord. Amazingly, there are no recorded cases of the holy man going up the mountain and finding that it's the others who are right. It always turns out that God wants unbelievers to suffer, and what could be more noble than to help him a little? When religion rules, toleration disappears, for you cannot cherish the verdict of death to the infidels, yet also tolerate those who disagree - for those are the very same infidels ... ~ Simon Blackburn

I think that we reject the evidence that our world is changing because we are still, as that wonderfully wise biologist E. O. Wilson reminded us, tribal carnivores. We are programmed by our inheritance to see other living things as mainly something to eat, and we care more about our national tribe than anything else. We will even give our lives for it and are quite ready to kill other humans in the cruellest of ways for the good of our tribe. We still find alien the concept that we and the rest of life, from bacteria to whales, are parts of the much larger and diverse entity, the living Earth. ~ James E. Lovelock

the Kauravas and the Pandavas turned from demi-gods into cave men, the great war reduced to a tribal feud fought with sticks and stones. ~ William Dalrymple

He orders a batch of handmade tiedyed shirts from Guizhou province and takes them to a graduate student at the Central Authority Fine Arts School to find out what to charge. The graduate student swings his long hair back and forth and tells Hao An these shirts are not authentic enough, not tribal enough. No way are young Beijingers going to be interested in them: there's no art, no attitude. "What should I do now then?" asks Hao An. The graduate student tells him to head to the bars in Sanlitun and sell them to drunken foreigners and pretentious businessmen with art collections. ~ Xiaolu Guo

Ah, but depression - that is what we all hate. We the afflicted. Whereas the relatives and shrinks, the tribal ring, they rather welcome it: you are quiet and you suffer. ~ Kate Millett

No. But then the American Government
whatever branch
has never really grasped the concept of tribal identity. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters, and I think that is the key to it right there. It is monsters; it is learning about them: it is both thrill and safety. You can think of them without being desperately afraid because they are not going to come into your living room and eat you. That is 'Jaws.' ~ Peter Benchley

She's the Sandwhich Lady."
"Excuse me?"
"She delivers sandwiches to the homeless."
"Really. I can't imagine her in such a role."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, she always seems so impulsive, so emotional. What's the word I'm searching for? So individualistic. Not tribal at all ... ~ Sherman Alexie

You cannot win the war. You will seem to win but it will be an illusion. You will win the battles, kill billions, rape Worlds, take slaves, and destroy ships and weapons. But after that you will be forced to hold the subjection. Your numbers will not be expendable. You will be spread thin, exposed to other cultures that will influence you, change you. You will lose skirmishes, and in the end you will be forced back. Then will come a loss of old ethics, corruption and opportunism will replace your honor and you will know unspeakable shame and dishonor... your culture will soon be weltering back into a barbarism and disorganization which in its corruption and despair will be nothing like the proud tribal primitive life of its first barbarism. You will be aware of the difference and unable to return. ~ Charles V. De Vet

Islam from the beginning was primarily predisposed toward one particular people. There is very little doubt that in its inception, Islam was a geopolitical reaction to the other groups around them. Even those sympathetic to Islam, such as Ali Dashti, the noted Iranian journalist, comment that the greatest miracle in Islam is that it gave Mohammed's followers an identity, something they had lacked as various warring tribal groups. The very language of the Koran is restrictive. To claim that Mohammed's only miracle was the Koran and then to state that one cannot recognize the miracle unless one knows the language makes a miracle anything but universal. How can a "prophet to the world" be so narrowly restricted to a language group? The Koran, it is said, is only inspired in the original language - no other language can bear the miracle. The narrowness of its ethnic appeal cannot be ignored. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Yet I couldn't connect this racial purity with the warmth of the toothless, lined Bedouin women who showed me such affection in the hospital. I thought about the Bedouin patients I had attended in Riyadh and what they had taught me of acceptance. Surely these Bedouin were the purest Saudis of all, Daughters of Arabia, borne of tribal forebears who had roamed Arabia before the slick of oil wealth suffocated their culture, washing them up like half-dead seagulls into the new urban metropolis of modern Saudi Arabia. I decided it had to be wealth which made the stark difference. All I had to do was think back to the "real" Saudis I had met in Riyadh, so different than the women sharing this tent with me. ~ Qanta A. Ahmed

I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events. ~ William S. Burroughs

We don't like to admit that the ideology of white supremacy, constructed and reified for centuries, is still with us in the expectations that many whites have. Ina social world in which whiteness is central, where white people have the luxury of thinking of themselves as individuals and never in racial terms, seeing or talking about race is unnecessary and often forbidden, except for intra-tribal talk about the problems of others. In this sense, people who profess themselves to be color-blind are disingenuous or deluding themselves ~ Sheryll Cashin

Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden. ~ Anne Sexton

The myth of redemptive violence is, in short, nationalism become absolute. This myth speaks for God; it does not listen for God to speak. It invokes the sovereignty of God as its own; it does not entertain the prophetic possibility of radical judgment by God. It misappropriates the language, symbols, and scriptures of Christianity. It does not seek God in order to change; it embraces God in order to prevent change. Its God is not the impartial ruler of all nations but a tribal god worshiped as an idol. Its metaphor is not the journey but the fortress. Its symbol is not the cross but the crosshairs of a gun. Its offer is not forgiveness but victory. Its good news is not the unconditional love of enemies but their final elimination. Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy. Its usurps the revelation of God's purposes for humanity in Jesus. It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous. ~ Walter Wink