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

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?

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.

If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.

A cold wind blew on the prairie on the day the last buffalo fell. A death wind for my people.

God made me an Indian.

I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.

The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.

If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it.

Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.

Memories -images and precious thoughts that shall not die and cannot be destroyed.

I do not always listen again but if something strikes me, I exploit it.

I will destroy my enemies by converting them to friends.

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man.

Arguably, we are the most intellectual creatures that’s ever walked on planet Earth. So how come, then, that this so intellectual creature is destroying its only home?

We do not need to kill or destroy to win. We are a movement that builds and not destroys.