Indigenous Thought Quotes & Sayings

Mowaljarlai rarely answered questions with an abstract explanation; he always told a story. His was not a fragmented world, divided into the convenient disciplinary languages and jargon that seem to be required for the understanding of concepts and principles in, for example, mathematics, physics, art and literature. Not only did he not have these languages; he thought this was a strange way to arrive at understanding the way in which the world lives in itself. It baffled him that whitefellas developed their knowledge by busting things up, reducing things to little pieces separate from everything else that contributes to their nature. For him, everything in creation is not only living and interconnected, but exists in a story and story cycle. Yet his knowledge of what whitefellas call 'science' was extraordinary."
p80-1. — Hannah Rachel Bell

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English. — Steven Pinker

Think, Believe, Dream, and Dare. — Walt Disney Company

And when she cums she screams and she throws a pillow across the room, it goes out the window, over the balcony. — Caroline Kepnes

Indigenous people have been tracking the same 'psychic virus' for many centuries, calling it 'wetiko' in Cree (windigo in Ojibwa, wintiko in Powhatan), a term that refers to a biologically wicked person or spirit who terrorizes others by means of evil acts. — Paul Levy

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking. — H.L. Mencken

The oldest among Kashmiris often claim that their is nothing new about their condition, that they they have been slaves of foreign rulers since the sixteenth century, when the Moghul emperor Akbar annexed Kashmir and appointed a local governer to rule the state. In the chaos of post-Moghul India, the old empire rapidly disintegrating, Afghani and Sikh invaders plundered Kashmir at will. The peasantry was taxed and taxed into utter wretchedness; the cultural and intellectual life, which under indigenous rulers had produced some of the greatest poetry, music, and philosophy in the subcontinent, dried up. Barbaric rules were imposed in the early nineteenth century, a Sikh who killed a native of Kashmir was fined nothing more than two rupees. Victor Jacquemont, a botanist and friend of Stendahl's who came to the valley in 1831, thought that nowhere else in India were the masses as poor and denuded as they were in Kashmir. — Pankaj Mishra

I watched the enormity of the clouds for several minutes. What I wanted to experience in the water, I realized, was how life of the reef was layered and intertwined. I now had many individual pieces at hand: named images, nouns. How were they related? What were the verbs? Which syntaxes were indigenous to the place? I asked a dozen knowledgeable people. No one was inclined to elaborate- or they didn't know. "Did you see the octopus?" Someone shouted after the dive. Yes, I thought, but who among us knows what it was doing? What else was THERE, just then? WHY? — Barry Lopez

You should never assume. You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass out of you and me because that's how it's spelled. — Ellen DeGeneres

There was little that was truly original or indigenous to Gilead. Its genius was synthesis. — Margaret Atwood

Experience is a great teacher. — John Legend

We encourage one another in mediocrity. — Charles Lamb

Together, we must renew our continued commitment to serve and pledge to bring a positive change to our communities. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

It simply lies beyond the capacity of the human mind. And if the Bible is correct, then what created our universe, God, was and is metaphysical. — Gerald Schroeder

Is Donald Trump a serious candidate? The reason I ask this is, if you're going to close the Internet, realize, America, what that entails. That entails getting rid of the First amendment, ok? It's no small feat. — Rand Paul

No past experience, however rich, and no historical research, however thorough, can save the living generation the creative task of finding their own answers and shaping their own future. — Alexander Gerschenkron

They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving. — Raymond Carver