Famous Irish Quotations Part 1

A Selection of Famous Irish Quotations
( In Alphabetical Order, A to K )

Beckett, Samuel b. 1906
With regard to the disposal of these my body, mind and soul, I desire that they be burnt and placed in a paper bag and brought to the Abbey Theatre.
Murphy

Berkeley, Bishop George 1685-1753
Some queries proposed to the consideration of the public: Whether there be upon earth any Christian or civilised people so beggarly wretched and destitute as the common Irish?
The Querist

Blount, Charles, 8th Lord Mountjoy 1563-1606
That it may please her excellent majesty to conceive of this her kingdom of Ireland, that it is one of the goodliest provinces of the world, being in itself either in quantity or quality little inferior to her realm of England
Address to Elizabeth I, 1601 (modernised)

Brook, Sir Basil 1st Viscount Brookeborough 1888-1973
Many in the audience employ Catholics, but I have not one about my place. Catholics are out to destroy Ulster with all their might and power. They want to nullify the Protestant vote, take all they can out of Ulster and then see it go to hell.
Speech at Mulladuff, Newtownbutler, 12 July 1933

Speech at Stormont, 21 November 1934
We are carrying on a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people

Browne, Dr Noel b. 1915
The courts are open to anyone – like the Ritz.
The Irish Times, ‘This Week They Said’, 17 July 1971

23 December 1972
Yeat’s Terrible Beauty truly has become a sick and sectarian, angry and representative old crone.
The Irish Times, ‘This Week They Said’,

Burke, Edmund 1729-1797

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
American Taxation

The march of the human mind is slow
American Taxation

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation
Letters on a Regicide Peace

As long as men hold charity and justice to be essential, integral parts of religion, there can be little danger from a strong attachment to particular tenets of faith.
Letter to William Smith

England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for us both. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.
Letter to Samuel Span

Bushe, Charles Kendal 1767 – 1843
I strip this formidable measure of all its pretences and all its aggravations. I look at it nakedly and abstractedly. I see nothing in it but one question – ‘Will you give up your country?’
Speech against Act of Union, January 1800.

Butt, Isaac 1813-1879
I see good for Ireland. An orator shall yet arise whose voice shall teach her people wisdom, and whose efforts shall procure for him the epithet of father of his country.
Speech as President of Historical Society, Trinity College, 1833

Lord Byron 1788-1824
What is England without Ireland, what is Ireland without Catholics?
On Catholic emancipation, House of Lords,
21 April 1812.

Carson, Edward 1854-1935
You are going to pass Home Rule…by a pure act of force….Your act of force will be resisted by force.
Speech in the House of Commons, 8 August 1911

If they were to be my last and latest words I should still say to you, ‘Arm yourselves….Arm and prepare to acquit yourselves like men, for the day of your ordeal is at hand’.
Anti-Home Rule speech at Manchester
25 October 1912

Casement, Sir Roger 1864-1916
If today when all Europe is dying for national ends, whole peoples marching down with songs of joy to the valley of eternal night, we alone stand by idle and moved only to words, then we are in truth the most contemptible of all the peoples in Europe.
Letter to Joe McGarrity, 29 April 1915

I was always an Irish separatist in heart and thought.
Memorandum to close friends,
Brixton Prison, 1916.

It is a strange, strange fate, and now, as I stand face to face with death, I feel as if they were going to kill a boy. For I feel like a boy – and my hands are so free from blood and my heart always so compassionate and pitiful that I cannot comprehend that anyone wants to hang me.
MS found in Casement’s condemned cell.

Childers, Erskine 1870-1922
I was bound by honour, conscience and principle to oppose the Treaty by speech, writing, and action, when it came to the disastrous point, in war. For we hold that a nation has no right to surrender its declared and established Independence, and that even a minority has a right to resist that surrender in arms.
Speech at court-martial, 18 November 1922

It seems perfectly simple and inevitable, like lying down after a long day’s work.
Letter to wife from prison, November 1922.

Churchill, Lord Randolph 1849-1894
I decided some time ago that if the GOM [Gladstone] went for Home Rule, the Orange Card would be the one to play. Please God it may turn out the ace of trumps and not the two.
Letter to Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, 16 February 1886.

Ulster at the proper moment will resort to its supreme arbitrament of force. Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right.
On landing at Larne, 22 February 1886

Churchill, Sir Winston 1874-1964
Now is your chance. Now or never. ‘A nation once again’. Am very ready to meet you at any time.
Secret telegram to De Valera 8 December 1941,
after Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour,
quoted in Carroll, Ireland in the War Years.

Clarke, Thomas 1857-1916
Wait till they [Irish Volunteers] get their fist clutching the steel barrel of a business rifle and then Irish instinctive manhood can be relied on.
Letter to Joe McGarrity, Clan na Gael,
November 1913.

I am to be shot at dawn. I am glad I am getting a soldier’s death. I feared it might be hanging or imprisonment. I have had enough of jail.
Letter to wife, 2 May 1916

Collins, Michael 1890-1922
There is no crime is detecting and destroying in war-time, the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin.
Private document on Bloody Sunday,
quoted in Taylor, Michael Collins

Think what I have got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted for the past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied with the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this – early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous – a bullet may just as well have done the job five years ago.
Letter, 6 December 1921.

Connolly, James 1868-1916
Apostles of Freedom are ever idolised when dead, but crucified when alive.
Workers Republic, 13 August 1989

A revolutionist who surrenders the initiative to the enemy is already defeated before a blow is struck.
Workers Republic, 4 December 1914

Cosgrave, Liam b. 1920
Not for the first time has this party stood between the people of this country and anarchy. And remember…those people who comment so freely and write so freely…some of them aren’t even Irish…Some of these are blow-ins. Now as far as we’re concerned they can blow out, or blow up.
Fine Gael Ard Fheis Address, The Irish Times,
23 May 1977

Cosgrave, William T 1880-1965
No nation has had war made upon its vital interests with such bitter disregard of every principle of morality or good government as this country of ours has had to suffer during the last twelve months.
On Dublin Housing Grant, Seanad Eireann,
7 February 1923.

Costello, John 1891-1976
I, as a Catholic, obey my Church authorities and will continue to do so, in spite of The Irish Times or anything else.
Dail Eireann, April 1951, following Dr Browne’s resignation on withdrawal of Mother and Child Scheme.

Craig, James
1st Viscount Craigavon 1871-1940
Ours is a Protestant Government and I am an Orangeman
Speech at Poyntxpass, 12 July 1932

We are King’s men and we shall be with you to the end.
Broadcast to Britain, 1939

Cromwell, Oliver 1599-1658
It has pleased God to bless our endeavours at Drogheda…I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did, are in safe custody for the Barbadoes…I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs.
Letter to the Hon. John Bradshaw, President of the
Council of State, September 1649

Davis, Thomas 1814-1845
Be my epite praise of this mercy belongs.
Letter to the Hon. John Bradshaw, President of the
Council of State, September 1649

Davis, Thomas 1814-1845
Be my epitaph writ on my country’s mind, / ‘He served his country and loved his kind’
My Grave

But – hark! – some voice like thunder spake, / ‘The West’s awake, the West’s awake’ - / ‘Sing oh! hurrah! Let England quake, / We’ll watch till death for Erin’s sake!’
The West’s Asleep

De Valera, Eamon 1882-1973
Freedom is a thing that you cannot cut in two – you are either all free or you are not free.
Limerick, 5 October 1921

I am against this treaty, not because I am a man of war, but a man of peace. I am against this treaty because it will not end the centuries of conflict between the two nations of Great Britain and Ireland.
19 December 1921

Whenever I wanted to know what the Irish people wanted, I had only to examine my own heart and it told me straight off what the Irish people wanted.
Dail Eireann, 6 January 1922, in reply to a jibe at
his ‘foreignness’, in the Freeman’s Journal.

…a land whose countryside would be bright with cozy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the rompings of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths and the laughter of comely maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. It would, in a word, be the home of a people living the life that God desires that man should live.
Address, St. Patrick’s Day, 1943

Mr Churchill is proud of Britain’s stand alone after France had fallen and before America entered the war. Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone, not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres, in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility but each time on regaining consciousness, took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?
Radio broadcast, 16 May 1945

Devlin, Bernadette b. 1947
Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom
The Price of my Soul

Devoy, John 1842-1928
I think the only true solution of the land question is the abolition of landlordism. The land of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland.
October 1878

Dillon, John 1851-1927
I say without fear that if tomorrow, in asserting the freedom of Ireland, we were to exchange for servitude to Westminster servitude to…any body of cardinals in Rome, then I would say goodbye for ever to the struggle for Irish freedom.
Speech at Drogheda, 1888, quoted in Lyons
Ireland Since the Famine.

Donleavy, James Patrick b. 1926
When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.
The Ginger Man

Emmet, Robert 1778-1803
I have but a few more words to say …I am going to my cold and silent grave – my lamp of life is nearly extinguished – my race is run – the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to make at my departure from this world, it is – the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them rest in obscurity and peace! Let my memory be left in oblivion, my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.
Speech from the dock

Faulkner, Brian 1921-1977
You can do three things in Irish politics, the right thing, the wrong thing, or nothing at all. I have always though it better to do the wrong thing than to do nothing at all.
Speech, July 1974

Flanagan, Oliver J. 1920
Let us hope and trust that there are sufficient proud and ignorant people left in this country to stand up to the intellectuals who are out to destroy faith and fatherland.
The Irish Times, ‘This Week They Said’,
10 April 1971

Friel, Brian b.1929
May we write your epitaph now, Mr Emmet?
The Mundy Scheme, Subtitle

Gladstone, William Ewart 1809-1898
Only now by a long, slow, and painful process have we arrived at the conclusion that Ireland is to be dealt with in all respects as a free country, and is to be governed like every other free country according to the sentiments of its majority and not of its minority.
To Queen Victoria, explaining the Disestablishment
of the Irish Church, January 1869.

Gogarty, Oliver St John 1878-1957
As long as there is English spoken in the home, whatever is taught in the morning will be undone in the evening by the parents, and the greatest enthusiast has not suggested the shooting of mothers of English-speaking children.
On The Gaeltacht Commission Report,
Senate, 10 March 1927

Grattan, Henry 1746-1820
I found Ireland on her knees, I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty.
Speech demanding repeal of laws giving English
Parliament power over Ireland, 16 April 1782.

Griffith, Arthur 1871-1922
What I have signed I will stand by, in the belief that the end of the conflict of centuries in at hand.
Statement before Dail debate on Treaty,
December 1921

Hume, John b. 1937
The truth is that Ulster Unionists are not loyal to the crown, but the half-crown
The Irish Times, ‘This Week They Said’,
23 August 1969

Hyde, Douglas 1860-1949
It has always been very curious to see how Irish sentiment sticks in this half-way house – how it continues to apparently hate the English and at the same time continues to imitate them.
‘On the necessity for de-Anglicising the Irish
People’. Lecture in Leinster Hall, Molesworth
Street, Dublin. 25 November 1892

James, Henry 1843-1916
I was deeply moved by the tragic shabbiness of this sinister country
On visiting Dublin, March 1895, quoted in Leon
Edel ‘The Life of Henry James’

Johnson, Dr Samuel 1709-1784
The Irish are a fair people; - they never speak well of one another.
Boswell, Life of Johnson, 1775

Joyce, James 1882-1941
This lovely land that always sent / Her writers and artists to banishment / And in the spirit of Irish fun / Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.
Gas from a Burner

O Ireland my first and only love / Where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove!
Gas from a Burner

Do you know what Ireland is? Asked Stephen with cold violence. Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Irish Quotations, Part 2

Famous Irish Quotations
Edited by C. Ward