Vine Deloria, Jr. citations (11 citations)

Vine Deloria, Jr.: 11 citations 0 J'aime

Vine Deloria, Jr.: Citations en anglais

“Religion is for people who’re afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who’ve already been there.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

Commonly attributed to Deloria on the internet, or sometimes to a few others, but without legitimate sourcing, the earliest variant of this yet located is a single quotation in Awakened India Vo. 99 (1994) p. 327, ascribed to Fr. Patrick Collins, University of Notre Dame, USA:
Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who know they have been there — perhaps through involvement with religion.
The next variant located is ascribed to an anonymous member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Illuminating the Heart: Steps Toward a More Spiritual Marriage (1996) by Barbara G. Markway, p. 28:
Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.
A variant also occurs in The Higher Power of the Twelve-Step Program: For Believers & Non-Believers (2001), by Glenn F. Chesnut, Ch. 1 : Discovering a Higher Power:
Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell; twelvestep spirituality is for those who've been there.
Misattributed

“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”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 293

“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.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 293

“Who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. That is when the invaders of the North American continent will finally discover that for this land, God is red.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

pg. ix
God Is Red (1973)

“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.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

As quoted in "Daniel Quinn: Another Interpretation of the ‘Meaning of Life" by Nicolae Tanase, at Excellence Reporter (28 March 2016) https://excellencereporter.com/2016/03/28/daniel-quinn-another-interpretation-of-the-meaning-of-life/

“The breakup of Christianity during the Reformation into national churches and the proliferation of denominations today would seem to indicate that a religious universality cannot be successfully maintained across racial and ethnic lines. ... Ethnicity will almost always triumph.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 209

“The idea that religion was conceived as originally designed for a particular people relating to a specific god falls well within the experiences of the rest of humankind and may conceivably be considered a basic factor in the existence of religion.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 204

“Before any final solution to American history can occur, a reconciliation must be effected between the spiritual owner of the land – American Indians – and the political owner of the land – American Whites. Guilt and accusations cannot continue to revolve in a vacuum without some effort at reaching a solution.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

pg. 75
God Is Red (1973)

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

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Vine Deloria Jr.

As quoted in "Vine Deloria Jr." by Melissa Lorenz EMuseum @ Minnesota State University, Mankato (2008) https://web.archive.org/web/20080925082716/http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/history/mncultures/vinedeloriajr.htm

“Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. Today with an information "superhighway" now looming on the horizon, we are told that a lack of access to information will doom people to a life of meaninglessness — and poverty. As we look around and observe modern industrial society, however, there is no question that information, in and of itself, is useless and that as more data is generated, ethical and moral decisions are taking on a fantasy dimension in which a "lack of evidence to indict" is the moral equivalent of the good deed.”

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Vine Deloria Jr.

Foreword to Words of Power: Voices from Indian America (1994), also quoted in "Vine Deloria, Jr." at Indigenous Peoples Literature (2015) by Glen Welker http://www.indigenouspeople.net/vine.htm