I love our shared island, our shared Ireland and its core decency. I love it for its imagination and its celebration of the endless possibilities for our people. — Michael D. Higgins
Being Irish is very much a part of who I am. I take it everywhere with me. — Colin Farrell
Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England - Ireland is not a geographical fragment, but a nation. — Charles Stewart Parnell
That's the Irish all over -- they treat a joke as a serious thing and a serious thing as a joke. — Sean O'Casey
At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. — Seamus Heaney
The Irish are the one race for which psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever... because they already live in a dream world. — Sigmund Freud
Broken Irish is better than clever English — Irish Proverbs
The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories. — P. L. Travers
Irish tory employers hid[e] their sweatshops behind orange flags, and Irish home rule landlords us[e] the green sunburst of Erin to cloak their rack-renting in the festering slums of our Irish towns. — James Connolly
To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan
No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove. — James Joyce
We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. — Winston Churchill
But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible — Anne Mccaffrey
The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven't seen the joke yet. — Oliver Herford
If you’re enough lucky to be Irish… You’re lucky enough! — Irish Proverbs
Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to. — Shane Leslie
Irishness Quotes
The Irish Republic must be made a word to conjure with - a rallying point for the disaffected, a haven for the oppressed, a point of departure for the socialist, enthusiastic in the cause of human freedom. — James Connolly
You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed. — Patrick Pearse
Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on. — James Connolly
As long as Ireland is unfree the only honourable attitude for Irish men, women to have is an attitude of rebellion. — Patrick Pearse
Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us. — Patrick Pearse
You don’t get black power by chanting it. You get it by doing what the other groups have done. The Irish kept quiet. They didn’t shout “Irish Power”, “Jew Power”, [or] “Italian Power”. They kept their mouths shut and took over the police department of New York City, and the mayorship of Boston. — Whitney M. Young
Only the Irish working class remains as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland. — James Connolly
I had that stubborn streak, the Irish in me I guess. — Gregory Peck
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. — William Butler Yeats
In fact, very few people realize it, but in the late 1700s, there were more quote unquote slaves who were White - most of them, frankly, were Irish as you pointed out - indentured servants, than there were slaves who were African. — Douglas Macgregor
Irishmen Quotes
The Irishman sustains himself during brief periods of joy by the knowledge that tragedy is just around the corner. — William Butler Yeats
We refuse to lie here in dishonor! We are not criminals, but Irishmen! This is the crime of which we stand accused. — Bobby Sands
In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish. — Thomas Cahill
Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. — Daniel O'Connell
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. — Eamon de Valera
Who better than an Irishman can understand the Indians, while still being stirred by tales of the US cavalry? — John Ford
I swim in a pool of my own neurosis. I carry love, grief deeply, like an Irishman. — Richard Harris
The Irishman in English literature may be said to have been born with an apology in his mouth. — James Connolly
Now it's a war on women; tomorrow it's going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something like that. — Paul Ryan
I would never repudiate the fact that I am an Irishman — Ian Paisley
Irish Quotes
There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment. — Paul Theroux
I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess! — Audrey Hepburn
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon. — Bobby Sands
I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system. — Mary Robinson
I was for two years a pupil at the Model School in Fort street which was then conducted upon the Irish national system, and if any special religious instruction was given in connection with that system, I do not recollect it. — Edmund Barton
May your neighbors respect you, trouble neglect you, angels protect you and heaven accept you — Drake
I have no prouder boast to say I am Irish and have been privileged to fight for the Irish people and for Ireland. If I have a duty I will perform it to the full with the unshakable belief that we are a noble race and that chains and bounds have no part in us — Francis Hughes
You know a lot of people smoke crack on St. Patrick's Day. And it has nothing to do with being Irish or anything or nothing about luck. — Theo Von
Wherever you go and whatever you do, may the luck of the Irish be there with you. — Irish Proverbs
This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever. — Sigmund Freud
Ireland Quotes
We, at least, are not loyal men: we confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England. — James Connolly
The British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland. — James Connolly
But while Ireland is not free I remain a rebel, unconverted and unconvertible. There is no word strong enough for it. I am pledged as a rebel, an unconvertible rebel, to the one thing - a free and independent Republic. — Constance Markievicz
Some mornings you wake up and think, gee I look handsome today. Other days I think, what am I doing in the movies? I wanna go back to Ireland and drive a forklift. — Liam Neeson
I feel like the luckiest child in the world because I got to grow up in Ireland. In summer is when you really grow up. During the year, I would go back to the States, and all year long really couldn't wait to get back to Ardmore. — Olivia Wilde
They want to derail peace because they want to plunge Northern Ireland back into armed conflict. — Peter Mandelson
Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival? — Theodore Bikel
I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy. — Brian Eno
Finland had a civil war less than 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States. — Harri Holkeri
Catholicism is more than a religion, it is a political power. Therefore I'm led to believe there will be no peace in Ireland until the Catholic Church is crushed — Oliver Cromwell
Irishman Quotes
They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken. — Bobby Sands
Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man. An Irishman's stomach is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him. — Mark Twain
I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits in me - we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland, there is the celtic factor... and I am an Irishman because you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman. — Ian Paisley
Have you heard about the Irishman who reversed into a car boot sale and sold the engine? — Frank Carson
An Irishman's imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies him; but it makes him that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and be 'agreeable to strangers', like a good-for-nothing woman on the streets. — George Bernard Shaw
Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him. — George Bernard Shaw
Pain seems to be easier, or melancholy seems to be easier to portray in a character. I don't know if that's because I'm a human being or because I'm an Irishman or both. — Colin Farrell
The only census of the senses, so far as I am aware, that ever before made them more than five, was the Irishman's reckoning of seven senses. I presume the Irishman's seventh sense was common sense; and I believe that the possession of that virtue by my countrymen-I speak as an Irishman. — Lord Kelvin
I was walking across King's Cross station when a drunken Irishman came stumbling up and flung his arms around me. He wanted to thank me for the peace process in Northern Ireland. — Ann Widdecombe
Being Irish Quotes
God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world. — Ed Mcmahon
It was impossible for me to believe that conditions in Europe could be worse than they were in the Polish section of Chicago, and in many Italian and Irish tenements, or that any workshops could be worse than some of those I had seen in our foreign quarters. — Alice Hamilton
I'm just following the Irish tradition of songwriting, the Irish way of life, the human way of life. Cram as much pleasure into life, and rail against the pain you have to suffer as a result. Or scream and rant with the pain, and wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure . . . — Shane MacGowan
There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting. — John Millington Synge
Ireland is where strange tales begin and happy endings are possible. — Charles Haughey
I think there's nothing better than laughing in life, so that's nice, to be thought of as someone who can make someone laugh. It's 'cause I think life is hard. You know, my dad was a really silly man. A great Irish silly man. And that's fine. — Joan Cusack
Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe. — Friedrich Engels
My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress. — James Cagney
In heaven there is no beer. That's why we drink ours here. — Frank Yankovic
Irish Music Quotes
I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that. — Van Morrison
My dad's Irish music was such a huge influence. — Dido Armstrong
The light music of whiskey falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude. — James Joyce
I'm a fanatic about Irish music. I love its moody, modal and timeless quality. I'm different from some other composers, because I don't look at this as just a job. I think of music as art. — James Horner
When's the last time you walked by a pub in Dublin and heard Irish music? When's the last time you ordered a coffee and heard an Irish accent? — Michael Flatley
I'm not so much a rock star, d'ya know what I mean? I play Irish music. There's really no age when you stop playing Irish music. Even if I retired from playing onstage, I'd still be singing in pubs. — Shane MacGowan
The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures. — Tom Waits
I play Irish popular music, yeah? Calling it folk is like putting it in a box. It's a living tradition, you know? — Shane MacGowan
I started hitching about the country when I was 16 or 17 years old. I found the music that was played around the country - Irish music - had a particular resonance. — Brendan Gleeson
My influences are with Irish music, church music and classical music. — Enya
Irish Women Quotes
Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish Whiskey. The other ten percent I'll probably waste. — Tug McGraw
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking. — James Cagney
No, men and women of the Irish race, we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic. — James Larkin
My mother was one of the most beautiful women, I have to say, of her generation. She was absolutely lovely. She was a very, extremely sensitive, Irish actress. She came from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and she came to London, and she was sort of discovered by several people. — Angela Lansbury
Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,--not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us--the Irish! — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi
It is a time when Irish women can link - as they are linking - through networks. They can do this through having an outward-looking attitude to what's happening to women in other countries, and by being affected by a broader debate. — Mary Robinson
Somebody once said that the Irish derived the greatest benefit from the English language. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter, they fling it at the sky like paint pots full of rainbow colors. — Malachy McCourt
I think Irish women are strong as horses, incredibly loyal and for the most part, funny, witty, bright and optimistic in the face of devastating reality. — Fionnula Flanagan
However it may be for others, for us of the Citizen Army there is but one ideal - an Ireland ruled, and owned, by Irish men and women, sovereign and independent from the centre to the sea, and flying its own flag outward over all the oceans. — James Connolly
We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent. — Sinead O'Connor
I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70. — Diane Ladd
I worked the drive-through at McDonald's and tried out different accents - Italian, Russian, Irish. — James Franco
I have a difficult time doing an Irish accent; even now, it kind of fades slowly into Scottish. — Robin Williams
I've been typecast. People don't want to take a risk or a chance. Quite a few times they've come up to me and say "We want you to do that Russian accent." And I'll be like, "How about if I do an Irish accent or a South African accent," and they don't trust that you can properly pull them off. — Scott Adkins
Caitriona Balfe, who is Irish, is also in my movie. I asked her to play her Irish accent in the movie, but her own brogue is so faint that I had to keep pumping it up. — Jodie Foster
I used to go to the school folk club with my songs when I was only 13 or so and say "this is a traditional folk song" and sing it with a bad Irish accent to disguise the real source. — Mark Knopfler
Because I'm Irish, I've always done an accent. Not doing an accent is off-putting because I sound like me. I love doing an accent. Doing the accent from West Virginia was great, and we had to get specific with it. — Eve Hewson
I would love to play a British character one day. My accent wavers between Scottish and Irish very easily, though. — Chris Lilley
Irish Writers Quotes
I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not. — Brendan Behan
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious. — Edna O'Brien
When I die, I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. I wonder would they know it was me? — J. P. Donleavy
The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think. — Brendan Behan
I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt. — Edna O'Brien
To be an Irish poet after that 19th century in which there was such a struggle toward the light, I think still will always be in the hearts of the writers of my generation and the generations before and hopefully the generations after. — Eavan Boland
I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer. — Maeve Binchy
There is an Irish way of paying compliments as though they were irresistible truths which makes what would otherwise be an impertinence delightful. — Katharine Tynan
Ireland is a fruitful mother of genius, but a barren nurse. — John Boyle O'Reilly
The Local Paper here asked that me books be banned........THE HIGHEST PRAISE for an Irish writer. — Ken Bruen
There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically. — Bobby Sands
In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs. — John Pentland Mahaffy
Here's to our wives and girlfriends...may they never meet! — Groucho Marx
If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness? — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money. — P. J. O'Rourke
In Ireland, it's been like U2 and The Cranberries, which is rock, but you know they're Irish. — Caroline Corr
If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? — Stanislaw Lem
I was born on a storm-swept rock and hate the soft growth of sun-baked lands where there is no frost in men's bones. — Liam O'Flaherty
What's the use of being Irish if you can't be thick? — Billy Conn
We all have views on what our Irishness means to us. Two members of the band were born in England and were raised in the Protestant faith. Bono's mother was Protestant and his father was Catholic. I was brought up Catholic. U2 are a living example of the kind of unity of faith and tradition that is possible in Northern Ireland. — Larry Mullen, Jr.
My mother was Irish and she was superstitious, if you'll forgive the tautology. — Rosalind Russell
Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it. — Conor Cruise O'Brien
Let no man write my epitaph. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. — Robert Emmet
Ireland has made its choice for the future and it has chosen the version of Irishness it will build. I know, and I will work with head and heart to be part of it with all of you in creating that future one in which all of us can be part of and part of us too. — Michael D. Higgins
How would you know a Cork footballer? He's the one who thinks that oral sex is just talking about it. — John B. Keane
It is in that English Parliament the chains for Ireland are forged, and any Irish patriot who goes into that forge to free Ireland will soon find himself welded into the agency of his country's subjection to England. — Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance. — William Butler Yeats
The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I always went to Ireland as a child. I remember trips to Dundalk, Wexford, Cork and Dublin. My gran was born in Dublin, and we had a lot of Irish friends, so we'd stay on their farms and go fishing. They were fantastic holidays - being outdoors all day and coming home to a really warm welcome in the evenings. — Vinnie Jones
The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland. — James Larkin
You know, I have a theory about Charlie Haughey. If you give him enough rope, he'll hang you. — Charles Haughey
The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill. — Harold Nicolson
When I get a very generous introduction like that I explain that I'm emotionally moved, but on the other hand I'm Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials. — Barry McCaffrey
You know it is summer in Ireland when the rain gets warmer. — Hal Roach
At Leeds I've tried to concentrate on my club form, but you get caught up in all the World Cup fever once you come back to Ireland and see all the Irish boys again. — Robbie Keane
What's the use of being Irish if the world doesn't break your heart? — John F. Kennedy
Consider Ireland.... You have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question. — Benjamin Disraeli
We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence. — William Butler Yeats
Eternal is the fact that the human creature born in Ireland and brought up in its air is Irish. I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy-two in England; but the twenty came first and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one. — George Bernard Shaw
The Irish seem to have more fire about them than the Scots. — Sean Connery
When I was a kid, if you didn't speak Irish, you really wanted to. And you played Gaelic games and you didn't pay any attention to what was happening in the outside world, because really, the - Ireland was the center of the universe. And I don't think that's the case anymore, although, admittedly, it is the center of the universe. — Roddy Doyle
In Conclusion
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