Wakan Quotes & Sayings

It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death. He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real. — Black Elk

Emotional control is essential for attaining higher levels of mind. The thing that the teacher looks for in a student is the degree of self-control, not coldness that someone has. — Frederick Lenz

Bible-believing Christians cannot accept any evolutionary interpretation. Dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time and may have even lived side by side within the past few thousand years. — Brad R. Batdorf

Long ago she'd clamped an iron shell around her heart and nothing and no one could pry it lose, but deep inside the tender flesh still beat. — Sarah Sundin

All that existed was precious in Crazy Horse's religion - whatever a man did or thought was good, was wakan, so long as he obeyed his own inner voice, for that too was wakan. — Stephen E. Ambrose

Then the young men, streaming blood on their painted chests and backs, would stand and begin their dancing and chanting, leaning back from or toward the sacred tree so that their bodies were often suspended totally by the rawhide and horn under their muscles. And always they stared at the sun as they danced and chanted. Sometimes they danced the full two days. More often, they would dance and leap until the pain caused them to fall unconscious or - if they were lucky and Wakan Tanka smiled on them - until the rawhide and horn ripped through their powerful chest or back muscles and freed them. — Dan Simmons

In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help.
You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom. — Tara Brach

Wakan Tanka never stops creating. — Archie Fire Lame Deer

I do not always ask, in my prayers and discussions, for only those things I would like to see happen, because no man can claim to know what is best for mankind. Wakan Tanka and Grandfather alone know what is best, and this is why, even though I am worried, my attitude is not overcome with fear of the future. I submit always to Wakan Tanka's will. This is not easy, and most people find it impossible, but I have seen the power of Prayer and I have seen God's desires fulfilled. So I pray always that God will give me wisdom to accept his way of doing things. — Frank Fools Crow

In the South Pacific, because of their size, mosquitoes are required to file flight plans. — Erma Bombeck

"Civilization" has been thrust upon me since the days of the reservations, and it has not added one whit to my sense of justice, to my reverence for the rights of life, to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity, or to my faith in Wakan Tanka, God of the Lakotas. — Luther Standing Bear

All human life is sunk deep in untruth; the individual cannot pull it out of this well without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding his present motives (like honor) senseless, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to the future and to the happiness in it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Listen to the air.
You can hear it, feel it,
smell it, taste it.
Woniya wakan, the holy air,
which renews all by its breath.
Woniya wakan, spirit, life, breath, renewal,
it means all that.
We sit together, don't touch,
but something is there,
we feel it between us
as a presence.
A good way to start thinking
about nature
is to talk to it,
talk to the rivers, to the lakes,
to the winds,
as to our relatives. — John Fire Lame Deer

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president ... except me. — Barry Goldwater

Dream, and then dare to dream more. — Lori Landis