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Native Quotes

“We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power.”

KnowsSoulBeautifulNaturalSpaceKnownRichGreaterDivineCommunicationAll ThingsUniversalRefuseWideRealmsNativeScornRobesNatural HistoryUniversal LoveCoronationFawns
Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.”

Has BeensEndsGovernmentCultureIntegrityResponsibleSacredDeterminedAbsenceIronyNativeNative AmericanAmerican CultureNative American Culture
Book:Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming
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“Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.”

WorldAmericaTreeThousandPercentHundredRiversRootsSpeciesFruitEdgesEightDawnNativeButterflyCrownsBatsPalmsFlewSpearsNorth AmericaBiodiversityOrchidsAmbushVipersJaguars
Author:E. O. Wilson
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“Native Americans are not and must not be props in a sort of theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. “What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America” is, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, “our Original Sin.”

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Book:Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
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“For character too is a process and an unfoldingamong our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?”

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Author:George Eliot
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“Look at native cultures - they've lasted for tens of thousands of years, not doing everything right. We wouldn't want to emulate them in many ways, but their basic philosophies - being a part of nature, a part of a tribe or group without elevating, not what you call dominator philosophies - they lasted for tens of thousands of years. It took us to come and put them asunder.”

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Author:Tom Shadyac
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“Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right.”

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Author:George Santayana
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“Of all my prosecutorsnot one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer.”

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Author:Susan B. Anthony
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“For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it," they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.”

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Author:Robert Benchley
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“There is something in this native land business and you cannot get away from it, in peace time you do not seem to notice it much particularly when you live in foreign parts but when there is a war and you are all alone and completely cut off from knowing about your country well then there it is, your native land is your native land, it certainly is.”

WellsWarCountrySeemsKnowingCuttingLandNativeGet AwayHomelandAll AloneNative Land
Book:Wars I have seen
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“There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans--who were not allowed to learn to read and write--and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed.”

WritingCountryValuesThreeCenturyIgnoranceAncientTraditionalNativeSpeakersNative AmericanAmerican Values
Book:WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
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“The Good Quality Snob, or wearer of muted tweeds, cut almost exactly the same from year to year, often with a hat of the same material, [is] native to the Boston North Shore, the Chicago North Shore, the North Shore of Long Island, to Westchester County, the Philadelphia Main Line and the Peninsula area of San Francisco.”

YearsLongArtLinesQualityCuttingMaterialsAreasIslandsNativeHatsShoreChicagoBostonSan FranciscoCountyPhiladelphiaSnobGood QualityLong IslandPeninsulasTweed
Author:Russell Lynes
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“Adolescents are travelers, far from home with no native land, neither children nor adults. They are jet-setters who fly from one country to another with amazing speed. Sometimes they are four years old, an hour later they are twenty-five. They don't really fit anywhere. There's a yearning for place, a search for solid ground.”

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Book:Reviving Ophelia
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“Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.”

IfsHumansFactsLife IsUnderstandingHuman BeingsPsychologyHuman NatureIntellectualWeaknessAspectOvercomingConquerHuman LifeCharacteristicsFollyNativeAgain And AgainHelplessIncapableFlawedInnatePsychoanalysisWisestDubious
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“The Indian is one of Nature's gentlemen--he never says or does a rude or vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians, who form the surplus of overpopulous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy.”

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Book:Roughing it in the Bush: Or, Life in Canada
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“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”

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Book:Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine
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“One of my recent acquisitions. It is called a medicine bag, from one of the native tribes of North America. A fascinating people, highly skilled in the use of plants' power. They too understand nature's essence as divine. So much so that they do not think it is man's place to own the land at all. Imagine that - think of all the wars we would have missed!”

PeopleThinkingMenWarUseAmericaImagineLandDivineEssenceMedicinePlantNativeFascinatingBagsImagine ThatTribesAcquisitionNorth America
Author:Maryrose Wood
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“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas' mysterious routes back to his native Guinea. Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”

ReligionWaitingForgetTakenSacrificeMastersConscienceMadnessLaysMiseryAlcoholMysteriousNativeRegionsSavagesRoutesPeasantsUnrealCrossroadsShadyGuinea
Author:Jacques Roumain
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“A range of studies shows there is no evidence immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans. In fact, first generation immigrants are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans. The two cities in this country most impacted by undocumented immigrants, you would think of the New York City with over 500,000 and Los Angeles, with a similar amount. Both those cities are among the safest in the free world.”

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Author:Geraldo Rivera
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“Normal children of both sexes and all cultures will follow a more or less standard and universal developmental pattern and timetable, and reach approximately the same level of development at maturity. While a particular culture's need and expectations and teaching will shape the course of development and affect adult capabilities to some degree, normal individuals, whatever their native culture, if transplanted and taught, could learn to meet the normal demands of their adapted cultures.”

IfsNeedsChildrenCultureCoursesIndividualSexLevelsTeachingTaughtParticularDevelopmentShapesDemandDegreesNormalStandardsExpectationsAdultsUniversalPatternsMaturityNativeCapabilityAdaptedDevelopmentalTimetables
Book:Daughters: from infancy to independence
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“I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.”

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Book:Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
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“Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”

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Book:The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations
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“We are always giving foreign names to very native things. If there is a thing that reeks of the glorious tradition of the old English tavern, it is toasted cheese. But for some wild reason we call it Welsh rarebit. I believe that what we call Irish stew might more properly be called English stew, and that it is not particularly familiar in Ireland.”

IfsGivingBelieveReasonMightNamesI BelieveFoodTraditionFamiliarGloriousNativeIrelandCheeseStewWelshTavernsOld English
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“On the lawn next to the sidewalk a fire ant colony is swarming. The ants are pouring out of a mound nest, here no more than an irregular pile of dirt partly flattened by the last pass of a lawnmower. Winged queens and males are taking off on their nuptial flight, protected by angry-looking workers that run up and down the grass blades and out onto the blistering-hot concrete of the sidewalk. The species is unmistakably Solenopsis geminata, the native fire ant.”

RunningLastsNextFireHotAngrySpeciesWorkersMalesFlightGrassQueensNativeConcreteProtectedDirtBladesUp And DownAntsNestsPouringLawnsColonySidewalk
Author:E. O. Wilson
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