"The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits"
About this Quote
His choice of “dreams” is strategic. Dreams are where desire, identity, and continuity live; they’re also where power has the hardest time policing you. So the real target, he implies, isn’t land alone but imagination itself: the capacity to tell your own story, to make meaning on your own terms. That’s why he stacks “magic” and “familiar spirits” beside “dreams.” He’s not romanticizing Indigenous life as exotic; he’s pointing to the infrastructure of a worldview - rituals, cosmology, relationship to the unseen - that colonial policy historically treated as a threat to be reeducated out of existence.
The blunt “the whites” is meant to sting. Burroughs refuses the comfort of passive voice and bureaucratic euphemism, the language that turns conquest into “assimilation” or “progress.” Underneath the provocation is a diagnosis: domination works best when it convinces the dominated that nothing else is imaginable. In that sense, the quote isn’t only about Native America; it’s Burroughs sketching a broader theory of empire as a dream-killing machine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: The Place of Dead Roads (William S. Burroughs, 1983)
Evidence: The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits. (pp. 40-42 (often cited as p. 42 in later editions)). The earliest primary-source attribution I could verify is William S. Burroughs's novel The Place of Dead Roads, first published in 1983. Multiple secondary sources specifically attribute the line to this book, and a scholarly thesis quotes the surrounding passage and cites it to 'PDR 40-42,' indicating the line appears in that page range in the original text. Later quote sites often give p. 42 in modern reprints, especially the 2013 Holt Paperbacks edition, but the first publication is the 1983 novel. I was able to verify the wording and source attribution, but not directly inspect a scan of the 1983 first edition page itself through the available sources. Supporting evidence: a scholarly thesis citing the passage to 'PDR 40-42' and identifying it as The Place of Dead Roads, plus later reading-guide material explicitly naming that novel as the source. ([etheses.dur.ac.uk](https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/994/1/994.pdf%3FDDD11%2BEThOS%2520%28BL%29?utm_source=openai)) Other candidates (1) The Place of Dead Roads (William S. Burroughs, 2013) compilation98.3% ... The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams , the way the whites are taking care of the Indians : ... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Burroughs, William S. (2026, March 12). The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-way-to-kill-a-man-or-a-nation-is-to-cut-off-137838/
Chicago Style
Burroughs, William S. "The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits." FixQuotes. March 12, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-way-to-kill-a-man-or-a-nation-is-to-cut-off-137838/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits." FixQuotes, 12 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-way-to-kill-a-man-or-a-nation-is-to-cut-off-137838/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2026.
