Dan George Quotes

Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; that's what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.

It's a really important thing for Aboriginal people to remember how stories are told and the power of stories, and make it an important feature in our world again.

Remember Old Nan's stories, Bran. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you.

We're dead as a species if we don't tell stories, because then we don't know who we are.

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it, the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we would be naked on earth.

Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.

Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

I am a member of the Muskogee people. I'm a poet, a musician, a dreamer of sorts, a questioner. Like everyone else, I'm looking for answers of some sort or the other.

It's good to pass on stories.

Mythology works... because Indians have been bred on myths.

I'm the proof - you can't throw away tradition.

We're trying to let people see what their grandfather told them about.

We can't restore our civilization with someome else's babies.

The books that I'm writing, you can write them only when you're amongst your people. You're not going to find it on the Internet. You're not going to hear it there.

I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.

Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories ar for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

The world that birthed that story is long gone, all its people are dead, but it continues to touch the present and future because someone cared enough about that world to keep it. To put it in words. To remember it.

I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.

Once upon a time fairy tales were told to audiences of young and old alike. It is only in the last century that such tales were deemed fit only for small children, stripped of much of their original complexity, sensuality, and power to frighten and delight.

If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on.

And you must tell the child the legends I told you - as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of the people.

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'.

Storytelling is the oldest form of education.