Skip to content

The very conception of a Chosen People implies a lost religious ethnicity. Most likely religions do not in fact cross national and ethnic lines without losing their power and identity. It is probably more in the nature of things to have different groups with different religions

— Vine Deloria Jr. God Is Red (1973)

Another quote →

More quotes by Vine Deloria Jr.

Most tribal religions make no pretense as to their universality.

God Is Red (1973)

Besides the importance of land and religion, the existence of a specific religion among a distinct group of people is probably a fundamental element of human experience.

God Is Red (1973)

Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent.

Foreword to Words of Power: Voices from Indian America (1994)

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours."

When ecologists find a predictable life-span of a generation separating us from total extinction, it would seem that we have a duty to search for another interpretation of mankind’s life story.

All Vine Deloria Jr. quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Vine Deloria Jr. (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.