Famous quotes containing the words native, american and/or societies:
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“In the American metaphysic, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)