“I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.”

I am here by the will of the Great Spirit, and by his will I am chief.

I am nothing, neither a chief nor a soldier.

What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?

Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?

Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and the Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our own?

He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other different desires.

The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country and live in our fashion.

You come here to tell us lies, but we don’t want to hear them. If we told you more, you would have paid no attention. That is all I have to say.

What does it matter how long I pray, so long as my prayers are answered?

This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path.

It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.

If we must die, we die defending our rights.

What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one.

They want us to give up another chunk of our tribal land. This is not the first time or the last time.

God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.

Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.

Character is a wish for a perfect education.

It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.

Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.

Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.

I yearn for things, but at the same time I am just peaceful.

Even as a child I had a strong relationship with yearning and desire. And loss. Those things spoke to me.

All the events of our life are materials of which we can make what we will.

Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.