The Best Joseph Washakie Quotes

Joseph: [dying] Do you like the Redskins?
Dr. Sam Beckett: [crying] Best damn team in America.

[the Sheriff comes in to discover one of his prisoners has vanished during the night]
Sheriff: Where is George?
Joseph: Gone.
Sheriff: How?
Joseph: I turned him into a raven. He flew away.
Sheriff: Why didn't you go with him?
Joseph: I can only turn into a wolf. I'm too big for the bars.

Dr. Sam Beckett: [to Al, about the hand prints Joseph has put on his horse] What are the hand prints for?
Joseph: For men killed in battle.
Joseph: [offering Sam the rock with paint on it] Go on.
Dr. Sam Beckett: Uh, well, I, er...
Joseph: Go on, Togo. I can see it in your eyes.

Dr. Sam Beckett: Kenu, I'll take you to the reservation. But when we get there, you've got to see a doctor.
Joseph: Okay. But I don't know if I can help him.

Joseph: Did you scalp him?
Dr. Sam Beckett: No. I gave him a haircut instead.

Dr. Sam Beckett: [as George Washakie] But there's so much I don't know, that I can learn from you, that, that others can learn too!
Joseph: There's only one thing you have to learn: that freedom is the greatest gift we're born with, and the hardest thing to hold on to.

Admiral: Sam, this is just terrific. It's like the past come to life. You know, he just... he painted the hoof prints on there, and that's to show how many horse raids they went on, or how many horses they stole.
Dr. Sam Beckett: I thought we just borrowed them.
Joseph: The horses don't know that, eh?

Joseph: When I was in World War I, only the officers had ponies. I could never get over how naked they looked without their markings. How could you tell what they had done? How could you frighten your enemies?

[Sam sees his reflection in the mirror]
Dr. Sam Beckett: Oh boy. I'm an Indian!
Joseph: Could be worse. You could be a white man, eh?

Joseph: Lesson number two: don't mess with Indians.
[after Sam has knocked out the Sheriff]

Dr. Sam Beckett: I think I should take you back and put you in the nursing home, so you can be with your family and your friends.
Joseph: What family? There's only you and Suzanne. And you moved away.
Dr. Sam Beckett: What about your friends?
Joseph: My friends are here. The sun. The sky. The wind. And the earth.
Dr. Sam Beckett: The shape you're in, your friends could kill you.

Joseph: Death is a doorway, and we are like the grasshopper. When we die, we shed one skin, and put on another, and leap to a new life on the other side of the door.
Dr. Sam Beckett: What if there's nothing beyond the door?
Joseph: Then I would fight to hang on to this skin as hard as I could, because it would be all I had. But it's not. All of life is a series of leaps, for us grasshoppers, eh?
Dr. Sam Beckett: I guess you could say so...
Joseph: Sometimes we see where we are going, sometimes we don't. Have you ever leaped, and not at least survived?
Dr. Sam Beckett: No.
Joseph: The next time you leap, remember that.

[Sam is heading back to hold off the Sheriff]
Joseph: George. Are you going to scalp him?
Dr. Sam Beckett: No.
Joseph: Oh. Too bad.

Joseph: Damn white men. Can't make anything but more white men.