Indian Quotes

“[Chief White Halfoat:] Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“We preach and practice brotherhood — not only of man but of all living beings — not on Sundays only but on all the days of the week. We believe in the law of universal justice — that our present condition is the result of our past actions and that we are not subjected to the freaks of an irresponsible governor, who is prosecutor and judge at the same time; we depend for our salvation on our own acts and deeds and not on the sacrificial death of an attorney.”
― Virchand Raghavji Gandhi, The Monist

“Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the game against the best team in the state. The farm town high school I play for is nicknamed the "Indians," and I'm probably the only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a mascot.

This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline: INDIANS LOSE AGAIN.

Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“They say every dog has its day, Ganapathi, but for this terrier twilight came before tea-time.”
― Shashi Tharoor, The Great Indian Novel

“They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. That nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side.”
― Sitting Bull

“I just wanted to be an ordinary girl, married to a man who would provide me with a municipal tap, and three meals a day, while I cooked and cleaned for him.”
― Rasana Atreya, Tell a Thousand Lies

“Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your violent silvery uterus

Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace

Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream

Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm

Would I have been like this if I had different parents?

Was Malay alias me possible from an absolutely different sperm?

Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father?

Would I have made a professional gentleman of me like my dead brother without Shubha?

Oh, answer, let somebody answer these

Shubha, ah, Shubha

Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen

Come back on the green mattress again

As cathode rays are sucked up with the warmth of magnet's brilliance

I remember the letter of the final decesion of 1956

The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished with coon at that time

Fine rib-smashing roots were descending into your bosom

Stupid relationship inflted in the bypass of senseless neglect

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

I do not know whether I am going to die

Squandering was roaring within heart's exhaustive impatience

I'll disrupt and destroy

I'll split all into pieces for the sake of Art

There isn't any other way out for poetry except suicide

Shubha

Let me enter into the immemorial incontinence of your labia majora

Into the absurdity of woeless effort

In the golden chlorophyll of the drunken heart

Why wasn't I lost in my mother's urethra?

Why wasn't I driven away in my father's urine after his self-coition?

Why wasn't I mixed in the ovum-flux or in the phlegm?

With her eyes shut supine beneath me

I felt terribly distressed when I saw comfort seize Shubha

Women could be treacherous even after unfolding a helpless appeareance

Today it seems there is nothing so treacherous as Women and Art

Now my ferocious heart is rinning towards an impossible death

Vertigoes of water are coming up to my neck from the pierced earth

I will die

Oh what are these happening within me?

I am failing to fetch out my hand and my palm

From the dried sperms on my trousers spreading wings

300000 children are gliding toward the district of Shubha's bosom

Millions of needles are now running from my blood into Poetry

Now the smuggling of my obstinate leg is trying to plunge

Into the death killer sex-wig entangled in the hypnotic kingdom of words

In violent mirrors on each wall of the room I am observing

After letting loose a few naked Malay, his unestablished scramblings.”
― Malay Roy Choudhury, Selected Poems

“Despite all of the time he spent in Big Heart's, Wilson had never come to understand the social lives of Indians. He did not know that, in the Indian world, there is not much social difference between a rich Indian and a poor one. Generally speaking, Indian is Indian. A few who gain wealth and power as lawyers, businessmen, artists, or doctors may marry white people and keep only white friends, but generally Indians of different classes interact freely with one another. Most unemployed or working poor, some with good jobs and steady incomes, but all mixing together. Wilson also did not realize how tribal distinctions were much more important than economic ones. The rich and poor Spokanes may hang out together, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Spokanes are friendly with the Lakota or Navajo or any other tribe. The Sioux still distrust the Crow because they served as scouts for Custer. Hardly anybody likes the Pawnee. Most important, though, Wilson did not understand that the white people who pretend to be Indian are gently teased, ignored, plainly ridiculed, or beaten, depending on their degree of whiteness.”
― Sherman Alexie, Indian Killer

“What wouldn’t my people give for a few bites of the biryani she ordered me to throw away yesterday because she said it smelt?”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“I watched the rows and rows of chappals left by devotees outside the Hindu temple and wondered if the homeless boys who sometimes steal our chickens ever steal them, and if they do, are they punished, and if so by whom?”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“There was too much opinion in this country, too many sob stories. Nobody wanted to put a lid on anything; everyone wanted to say it all, about everything. If you as much as said hello to someone on a train or a plane, you were in for the unexpurgated memoirs. Nehru in 1947 had declared us a nation finding utterance - but in fifty years the utterance had become a mad clamour, a crazed babble, an unending howl. We were a nation of Scheherzades, afraid we'd die if, for a moment, we shut up. For myself, I'd mastered a face of steel, and an inscrutable nod. It did not always shut everyone up, but it did to some extent dam the ghastly flow.”
― Tarun J. Tejpal, The Story of My Assassins

“What use is status if you have no one to share it with, Dad?”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.”
― Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories

“In a great number of the cosmogonic myths the world is said to have developed from a great water, which was the prime matter. In many cases, as for instance in an Indian myth, this prime matter is indicated as a solution, out of which the solid earth crystallized out.”
― Svante Arrhenius, Theories Of Solutions

“Bent double, groaning with the weight, an old lame Indian was carrying on his back, by means of a strap looped over his forehead, another poor Indian, yet older and more decrepit than himself. He carried the older man and his crutches, trembling in every limb under this weight of the past, he carried both their burdens.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Goddamnit, in your Love Fever
I am suffering from Heart Tumor
You must be adept …you Pretty Charmer
I am falling for you…in this Indian Summer”
― Heenashree Khandelwal, Soulmates, By Chance

“As a middle class Indian you have always been taught to buy peace. Like a commodity.”
― Andy Paula

“I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist.”
― Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar

“Look at the truth from how it stands, not where it comes from. The truth is still the truth no matter whether it is spoken by an Indian, an American, a Chinese, an European, an African or an Australian!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“Last summer we had eight people in the [Christian] congregation who danced four different sun dances. Of course the missionaries have said all along that those ceremonies are pagan and we can't do that. Our people insist that they are free in the gospel, free in Christ Jesus, to participate in Indian religious forms and ceremonies. - George Tinker”
― Jim Wallis (Author), Cloud Of Witnesses

“Its just either your way or my way.
There is no way that is universally right.
For British, they killed us to develop their own nation.
For Indians, we killed them so that we develop in a free nation.”
― Hanif Hassan Barbhuiya