Sayings of Native American origin
Listen to the silence… It speaks.
When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect for us. –
Give the highest priority to the tenderness, gentleness and kindness .
Walk tall as the trees.
Looking upwards, I am filled with strength.
May the Great Spirit bless all who enter there.
Listen to your heart… It knows.
Honor the sacred.
May beauty surround you both.
Treat yourself and each other with respect.
The ones that matter most are the children.
Most of us do not look as handsome to others as we do to ourselves.
Life is not separate from death.
Not every sweet root gives birth to sweet grass.
All plants are our brothers and sisters. They talk to us and if we listen, we can hear them.
If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace…
when clouds hide the face of the sun in your lives,
Cherish youth, but trust old age.
A danger foreseen is half-avoided.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.
After dark all cats are leopards.
Before eating, always take time to thank the food.
The river is my brother for it carries my canoe.
In the United States, Native Americans are considered to be people whose pre-Columbian ancestors were indigenous to the lands within the nation’s modern boundaries. These peoples were composed of numerous distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups, and many of these groups survive intact today as sovereign nations.
The terms Native Americans use to refer to themselves vary regionally and generationally, with many older Native Americans self-identifying as “Indians” or “American Indians“, while younger Native Americans often identify as “Indigenous” or “Aboriginal.” Which terms should be used to refer to Native Americans has at times been controversial. The term “Native American” has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups, but has not traditionally included Native Hawaiians or certain Alaskan Natives, such as Aleut, Yup’ik, or Inuit peoples. Indigenous American peoples from Canada are known as First Nations. (An excerpt from Wikipedia)
More Native-American or American Indians Proverbs & Sayings
Poverty is a noose that strangles humility and breeds disrespect for God and man.
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty.
May the stars carry your sadness away.
His grandfather had often told him that he tried too hard to move trees when a wiser man would walk around them.
A man must make his own arrows.
Each person is his own judge.
The weakness of the enemy makes our strength.
Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.
A hungry stomach makes a short prayer.
I seek strength not to be greater than my brother but to fight my greatest enemy… myself.
The adventure has just begun.
Man has responsibility, not power.
Listen to the wind… It talks.
Looking forward, I am filled with vision.
Looking within, I discover peace.
Wisdom is of the future.
Those that lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. –
Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, Wisdom is of the future.
By listening to the inner self and following one’s instincts and intuitions, a person may be guided to safety.
Everyone who is successful must have dreamed of something.
They are all brothers. The Earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it….
The heavens give us each a song.
Nobody gets out of the bed to sleep on the floor.
Grown men can learn from very little children,
The devil goes away and heaven comes to stay.
Wisdom comes only when you stop looking for it and start living the life the Creator intended for you.
Let me walk in beauty and let my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunsets that you have created with me.
The greatest strength is gentleness.
We are all one child spinning through Mother Sky.
A brave man dies but once, a coward many times.
When the Indian wins, it is a massacre.
When the white man discovered this country, Indians were running it. No taxes, no debt, women did all the work. White man thought he could improve on a system like this.
The more you give, the more good things come to you.
May the sun bring you new energy by day.
Do not wrong or hate your neighbor for it is not he that you wrong but yourself.
Worms don’t like the robin’s song.
Even a small mouse has anger.
When a man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard.
The coward shoots with shut eyes.
Don’t be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts.
When you die, you will be spoken of as those in the sky, like the stars.
Keep the warmth of the sun in your heart.
Be kind to everything that lives.
A long and winding road whose every turn means discovery.
All dreams spin out from the same web.
One rain does not make a crop.
You’ll take each other’s hands and turn together to look at the road.
To touch the earth is to have harmony with nature.
Honor all with whom we share the Earth.
Knowledge is of the past.
The moon is not shamed by the barking of dogs.
Haste is the mother of inaccuracy.
With all things and in all things, we are relatives.
You already possess everything to become great.
Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
A good chief gives, he does not take.
May the warm winds of heaven blow softly upon your house.
The lazy ox drinks dirty water.
We always return to our first loves.
A good soldier is a poor scout.
Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it.
Walk in balance and beauty.
Sharing and giving are the ways of God.
A man or woman with many children has many homes.
A pearl is worthless as long as it is in its shell.
The rainbow is a sign from Him who is in all things.
Do not change horses in the middle of the river.
May hope forever wipe away your tears.
Children are a gift from the heavens.
A rocky vineyard does not need a prayer, but a pick ax.
When the last tree has been cut down, the last river has been polluted and the last fish has been caught — only then do you realize that money can’t buy everything:
Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds and whose breath gives life to all in the world, hear me. I am small and I am weak and I need your strength and your wisdom.
Our first teacher is our own heart.
If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come.
Looking behind, I am filled with gratitude.
free to stop,free to work,free to trade where I choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers,free to think and talk and act for myself, and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.
Many have fallen with the bottle in their hand.
We are made from Mother Earth and we go back to Mother Earth.
A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.
Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.
Remember that your children are not your own, but are lent to you by the Creator.
Every animal knows more than you do.
When frustration, difficulty and fear assail your relationship,
Make my hands respect the things that you have made and my ears sharp to hear your words and your voice.
Man’s law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit remain always the same.
May the rain wash away your worries.
There is nothing so eloquent as the rattlesnake’s tail.
Old hopes – new laughter – shared tears.
Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark.
Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant.
The way of the troublemaker is thorny.
The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
May happiness be your companion.
Help me always to speak the truth quietly,
If a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove.
The soul would have no rainbow if the eye had no tears.
All who have died are equal.
The one who tells the stories rules the world.
A starving man will eat with the wolf.
Each bird loves to hear himself sing.
When a fox walks lame, the old rabbit jumps.
The rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf.
What the people believe is true.
Everything the power does, it does in a circle. –
Be gentle as the spring rain.
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
Be known by the tracks you leave.
No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have a beginning.
Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.
It is easy to be brave from a distance.
Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.
Those who have one foot in the canoe, and one foot in the boat, are going to fall into the river.
It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace and live in peace.
It is less of a problem to be poor, than to be dishonest.
When the white man wins, it is a battle.
May the moon softly restore you by night.
God gives us each a song.
It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.
Listening to a liar is like drinking warm water.
One shower doesn’t make a flood.
When evening falls there you will both be.
Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand.
Lovely women, lovely quarrels.
It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.
If a man is to do something more than human, he must have more than human powers.
One finger cannot lift a pebble.
There are many good moccasin tracks along the trail of a straight arrow.
Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people want it.
There is no death, only a change of worlds.
In age, talk; in childhood, tears.
Ask questions from you heart and you will be answered from the heart.
Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes, so that when my life fades as the fading sunset ,my Spirit can come to you without shame.
Regard Heaven as your father, Earth as your Mother and all things as your Brothers and Sisters.
White men have too many chiefs.
May the breeze blow new strength into your beings.
Live strong as the mountains.
When the earth is hot, the worm stays in the ground.
If it does not kill you, it will bring you happiness.
He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.
I salute the light within your eyes.
Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.
Live and learn, die and forget it all.
You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf.
Let me learn the lessons that you have hidden under every rock and leaf.
The bird who has eaten cannot fly with the bird that is hungry.
Life is the flash of firefly in the night.
They are not dead who live in the hearts they leave behind.
Honor the Earth, our Mother.
Day and night cannot dwell together.