Dick Gregory Quotes

I find that the history books that we teach our kids with are not fully truthful, in my opinion.

The lessons of history are taught by the victors.

History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene

History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their view. Or, at any rate, the victors' version is given prominence and holds the field.

The Americans will never solve the Indian problem till the Indian is extinct. They have treated them after a fashion which has intensified their treachery and 'devilry' as enemies, and as friends reduces them to a degraded pauperism, devoid of the very first elements of civilization.

Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

History is the polemics of the victor..

The history handed down to us is what white men did in the daytime.

...They [Indians] should be made familiar with the lives of great and good men and women in American history, and be taught to feel a pride in all their great achievements. They should hear little or nothing of the 'wrongs of the Indians,' and of the injustice of the white race. If their unhappy race is alluded to, it should be to contrast it with the better future that is within their grasp.

It is easy to decry the nature of ethnic politics in this country. We are hostages to history and the ethnic compartmentalization that began in the colonial era

History is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.

Senator, some of us strongly believe that Americans are the last people that can go around the world preaching morality. What we are doing to the blacks in Africa today is what you have already done and continue to do to the American Indian.

When you go back and look at the history of anything, it’s always the records of the elite that survive.

A wild Indian, to reach the civilized world, must needs travel some thousands of miles in vehicles of conveyance, to which he is unaccustomed -- through latitudes and longitudes which are new to him -- living on food that he is unused to -- stared and gazed at by the thousands and tens of thousands whom he cannot talk to -- his heart grieving and his body sickening at the exhibition of white men's wealth and luxuries, which are enjoyed on the land, and over the bones of his ancestors. And at the end of his journey he stands (like a caged animal) to be scanned -- to be criticized -- to be pitied -- and heralded to the world as a mute -- as a brute, and a beggar.

I am one of the forgotten (in this land), one of the faceless ones, a Native American. I am One from whom this Land was stolen through the use of Deceit, through Lies, through Ravage, through Rape, through Pillage. I am one of those who knows the degradation continues...

This agency forbade the speaking of Indian languages, prohibited the conduct of traditional religious activities, outlawed traditional government, and made Indian people ashamed of who they were. Worst of all, the Bureau of Indian Affairs committed these acts against the children entrusted to its boarding schools, brutalizing them emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Even in this era of self -determination, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs is at long last serving as an advocate for Indian people in an atmosphere of mutual respect, the legacy of these misdeeds haunts us.

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Those in power write the history; those who suffer write the songs.

During the fifteen years in which I have been engaged in administering the laws of my country, I have never been called upon to hear or decide a case that appealed so strongly to my sympathy as the one now under consideration On the one side, we have a few of the remnants of a once numerous and powerful, but now weak, insignificant, unlettered and generally despised race; on the other, we have the representative of one of the most powerful, most enlightened, and most Christianized nations of modern times. On the one side, we have the representatives of this wasted race coming into this national tribunal of ours, asking for justice and liberty to enable them to adopt our boasted civilization, and to pursue the arts of peace, which have made us great and happy as a nation; on the other side, we have this magnificent, if not magnanimous, government, resisting this application with the determination, of sending these people back to the country which is to then less desirable than perpetual imprisonment in their own native land.

History is written by the rich so the poor get blamed for everything.

They are a harmless race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They are quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as industrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy one does not exist.

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so.

When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are..

No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified.

The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher class.