Éamon de Valera Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

Mr Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen, and before America had 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...a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?

Éamon de Valera
I am against this Treaty not because I am a man of war but because I am 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.

Éamon de Valera
Nature never intended me to be a partisan leader …
Every instinct of mine would indicate that I was meant to be a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, or even a bishop, rather than the leader of a revolution.

Éamon de Valera
No matter what the future may hold for the Irish nation, the seven years — 1916 to 1923 — must ever remain a period of absorbing interest. Not for over two hundred years has there been such a period of intense and sustained effort to regain the national sovereignty and independence. Over the greater part of the period it was the effort of, one might say, the entire nation. An overwhelming majority of the people of this island combined voluntarily during those years in pursuit of a common purpose.

Éamon de Valera
A Dhomhnall, I have to tell you, you are abolished.

Éamon de Valera
Further sacrifice of life would now be in vain…Military victory must be allowed to rest for the moment with those who have destroyed the Republic.

Éamon de Valera
For Irishmen, there is no football game to match rugby and if all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales but France and the whole lot of them put together.

Éamon de Valera
England pretends it is not by the naked sword, but by the good will of the people of the country that she is here. We will draw the naked sword to make her bare her own naked sword.

Éamon de Valera
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.

Éamon de Valera
Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done — we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is.

Éamon de Valera
Women are at once the boldest and most unmanageable revolutionaries.

Éamon de Valera
If I were told tomorrow, 'You can have a united Ireland if you give up the idea of restoring the national language to be the spoken language of the majority of the people,' I would for myself say no.

Éamon de Valera
It is my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Michael Collins and it will be recorded at my expense.

Éamon de Valera
Partition is after all only an old fortress of crumbled masonry — held together with the plaster of fiction.

Éamon de Valera
No longer shall our children, like our cattle, be brought up for export.

Éamon de Valera
Ministers not responsible to parliament — that would never do. Besides, I wanted to prepare a nice quiet job without too much work for my old age. Still, I admit, I was tempted. Look at the way de Gaulle rules France … absolute rule … very efficient.

Éamon de Valera
I sometimes admit that when I think of television and radio and their immense power, I feel somewhat afraid.

Éamon de Valera