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Tribes Quotes

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Tribes Quotes

“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.”

“ONE BUT MANY One God, many faces. One family, many races. One truth, many paths. One heart, many complexions. One light, many reflections. One world, many imperfections. ONE. We are all one, But many.”

“We prefer our tribes to the others. We believe in the superiority of our tribe, and we push back against those who threaten our group. Our tribes give us a sense of belonging, cooperation, purpose, comfort, and support. We nurture our tribes with myths and morals, facts and fictions, to bind ourselves to one another.”

“O Heavenly Children, the stories you have concocted in God's name have angered Him; for he would never instigate war between brothers, or encourage tribes to harbor resentment towards one another. He prefers the man who loves over the one who hates. And the man who spreads kindness, peace and knowledge, over the one who spreads lies, fear and terror — and misuses His name.”

“There were formerly horizons within which people lived and thought and mythologized. There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together. And so we are right now in an extremely perilous age of thunder, lightning, and hurricanes all around. I think it is improper to become hysterical about it, projecting hatred and blame. It is an inevitable, altogether natural thing that when energies that have never met before come into collision—each bearing its own pride—there should be turbulence. That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind—to which no one anywhere alive today can say that he has the key, the answer, the prophecy, to its dawn. Nor is there anyone to condemn here (”Judge not, that you may not be judged!”). What is occurring is completely natural, as are its pains, confusions, and mistakes.”

“Writing a book is both rewarding and inspiring The preparation, research and introduction of new chapters to an ever increasing text provides enormous excitement as one gets closer and closer to completion The culmination of all the hours of work combined with the emotional input in its creation cannot describe the sense of pride and accomplishment when it is finally published”

“You can no longer see or identify yourself solely as a member of a tribe, but as a citizen of a nation of one people working toward a common purpose.”

“As of 2015 only a dozen of the then 567 federally recognized tribal nations recognize same-sex marriage...Other tribes, however, have explicitly restricted same-sex marriage (all following the passage of DOMA), including the Navajo Nation, Cherokee Nation, Muscogee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, and Iowa Tribe. Although Congress could pass a statute that affects Indian Country Lindsay Roberson...considers it highly unlikely, given the federal government's relatively hands-off support for tribal governance. Within the Navajo context, this issue has brought about deep debate about the nature of tradition. Joanne Barker has written about the battles over same-sex marriage in Navajo Nation (as well as Cherokee Nation). She documents how the tribal legislation bans and defense of them affirm the discourses of U.S. nationalism, especially in their Christian and right-wing conservative forms. IN these cases, the tribal nation's exercise of sovereignty and self-determination replicates the relations of domination and dispossession that resemble the U.S. treatment of Native Peoples.”

“A host of scholars who have studied surviving southeastern Indian groups conclude that few if any of these peoples possess cultures that do not bear the mark of significant contact with nonindigenous societies. Even the most “traditional,” such as the Seminoles of Florida, whom Nancy O. Lurie describes as “Contact-Traditional,” were significantly altered from precolonial days by the time pioneer “salvage” ethnologists described their cultural traits and created laundry lists that have since become benchmarks for defining aboriginal culture in the region. To many more traditional reservation-based groups, having surviving Indian cultural traits is extremely important to proving authenticity, although they are not required for acknowledgement via the BIA process. The existence of surviving Indian cultural traits is highly persuasive to most observers in proving that a group still exists as a viable tribal community.”

“Some tribes maintain blood quantum, such as once-quarter proven blood degree from their tribe. Even so-called purely ‘descendancy’ tribes such as the Five Tribes with no blood quantum requirement jealously guard some proven, documentary link by blood to distant ancestors. More than any single BIA requirement, however, this criterion has proven troublesome for southeastern groups because of its reliance on on-Indian records and the confused (and confusing) nature of surviving documents.”

“If, instead of Wainwright's question, we ask 'What were the Picts?', the answer is very simple. They were a nation created by the union of a number of tribes. This union, formed initially as a military alliance against the common enemy, stood the test of time and long outlived the Roman invasion. For the last seventeen centuries the peoples of this union have been known collectively as the Picts, a name first recorded by the Romans. The name itself is a familiar part of the problem: did Picti really mean 'the painted men, or was it simply the Latin form of a long-forgotten native name? Puting this question on one side for the moment, we might refer to the Picts as 'The United Tribes of Caledonia', or UTC for short, a name which tells us just what they really were.”

“We were curious. We went seeking our tribe. And yes, I know there are people who’ll say I’m crazy. But just look at those people. Rag, Tag & Bobtail to a man. I’ll tell you about them, shall I? They’re victims of a conditioning in which authority figures such as parents, teachers, the media, religious leaders, politicians and even their mates – especially their mates actually - define what they think. Their cultural values define their beliefs and ultimately the way they perceive themselves, and so when they call me crazy, I take it as quite a compliment. My mind, trust me, is deeper than most Rag Tags would ever dare to swim.”

“Just as each person has certain idiosyncracies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncracies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn’t happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case, something else might go funny. He gave me a very simplified explanation, of course, and it’s just one small part of the problems we have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things. As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being hurt by them because we know that we are “deformed.” That’s what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives there unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear feathers on their heads to show which tribes they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one another.”

“Looking at the purpose of our government toward the Indians, we find that after subjugating them it has been our policy to collect the different tribes on reservations and support them at the expense of our people.”

“Thou knowest how numerous this tribe is, how united and how powerful in the assemblies. I will plead in a low voice so that only the judges may hear, for instigators are not lacking to stir up the crowd against me, and against all the best citizens. To scorn, in the interest of the Republic, this multitude of Jews so often turbulent in the assemblies shows a singular strength of mind. The money is in the Treasury; they do not accuse us of theft; they seek to stir up hatreds.”

“Every sentence has its drumbeat. rhythm is one of the most powerful dimensions of language: it separates tribes, united families, soothes children, and shocks us into new awarenesses. Every good writer, marching to his or her own drumbeat, marks out a vibrational field as home territory. The cadences of our sentences carry echos of ancestry and influence as surely as the double helix that orchstrates the life of the body.”

“The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.”

“Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.”

“Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe inforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells.”