Irish Politician Quotes

Edmund Burke

Éamon de Valera

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Michael Collins

James Connolly

Mary Robinson

Douglas Hyde

I left school at age 13. I was illiterate with no role models. The great psychobabble today is the dysfunctional family. Well, I've never met one that was functional. In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't.
I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11 … It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America.

Malachy McCourt

I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide

Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.

There is but one Earth, tiny and fragile, and one must get 100,000 miles away to appreciate fully one's good fortune in living on it.

Michael Collins

Whoop it up for liberty! After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic. Now, isn't that worth fighting for?

We have seen already how resistant public opinion is, firstly to comprehension of the new paradigm in which we have to operate; and secondly, to the rationale behind the decisions we have had to take.

Running around like a blue-behind bluebottle waving slogans.

Every TD, from the youngest or newest in the House, dreams of being Taoiseach.

Charles Haughey

Higgins: Is [assassination] only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?
Enda Kenny: I know you are a good Christian man who has your job to do in here from a political point of view. Many of his victims in the twin towers in New York were of Irish descent or directly Irish.

My only counsel to Ireland is that in order to become deeply Irish, she must become European.

In fact rock, rather than being an example of how freedom can be achieved within the capitalist structure, is an example of how capitalism can, almost without conscious effort, deceive those whom it oppresses.... So effective has the rock industry been in encouraging the spirit of optimistic youth take-over that rock's truly hard political edge, its constant exploration of the varieties of youthful frustration, has been ignored and softened.

People cannot escape from the obligation of a statute by putting a private interpretation upon its language.

Edward Macnaghten, Baron Macnaghten

If there is to be a war between England and the United States, tis impossible for us to pretend sympathy with the former. We shall have allies, not enemies, on the banks of the Columbia, and distant and desolate as are those tracts beyond the Rocky Mountains, even there may arise an opportunity for demanding and regaining our place among the nations.

There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations…. What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us.

Daniel O'Connell

None of us, whether we are in America or Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England.

Charles Stewart Parnell

The flowers anew returning seasons bring!
But beauty faded has no second spring.

Ambrose Philips

... it is impossible I could have been in two places at once, unless I were a bird.

This rooting out of the Irish people; this transplanting of them from their native home into a foreign land, may be all very well, so far as the young people are concerned; but for the fathers and mothers who have reared families in Ireland, it is immediate decay and death.

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

Dear Mum, I know you're always there
To help and guide me with all your care,
You nursed and fed me and made me strong
To face the world and all its wrong.

I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan