Irish Catholic Quotes

#1. I suffer from Irish-Catholic guilt. Guilt is a good reality check. It keeps that 'do what makes you happy' thing in check.

Edward Burns

#2. It was like the violence of the world he'd grown up in had embedded itself in him, taken root, and could never be fully excised.
He'd never been able to escape death. Apparently, he was a good Irish Catholic after all

S.E. Jakes

#3. I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

Edna O'Brien

#4. I grew up in a big Irish, Catholic family. My dad was a pretty rough guy. So one of my brothers left home when he was 15 and found his way to the gym. It gave me the opportunity to go and spend some time with him and work out in the gym.

Gerry Cooney

#5. Because they were, like me, Irish Catholic, their nuptials were distinguished by mediocre food, free-flowing liquor, pre-Riverdance-style step dancing, and their own peculiar strains of Gaelic piety.

Maureen Corrigan

#6. I spent my entire Irish Catholic youth in a constant state of guilt over imaginary sins. I learned that nothing is a sin as long as you don't take pleasure from it.

Terry Wogan

#7. And I'm a Catholic, from an Irish Catholic family, and we know plenty of stuff about guilt.

Bob Gunton

#8. I grew up Irish Catholic with a bunch of kids at Catholic school.

Brigid Brannagh

#9. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and I think they force you to watch every James Cagney movie.

Jimmy Fallon

#10. Children are not born with their hearts hardened in this fashion, not even Irish-Catholic children. They have to be taught by professionals.

Joe Queenan

#11. I would say that Catholics came in and competed with the Protestant work ethic. That is one thing. And they did assimilate into the broader society and a lot of them, especially Irish Catholic did their best to sound like they were English rather than Irish by dropping and the O and the apostrophe.

Steve King

#12. I was raised Irish Catholic, but I don't consider myself Irish Catholic: I consider myself me, an American.

John Cusack

#13. I had to have some balls to be Irish Catholic in South London. Most of that time I spent fighting.

Pierce Brosnan

#14. She was brought up strict Irish Catholic ... Protestants were evil, monstrous people and somehow probably contagious, and Katie grew up fearing them, praying to God she'd never see one.

Lisa Genova

#15. My Irish Catholic mother loved romantic movies, provided they ended with a kiss before the screen went dark. If things went any further than that, she'd complain, Why can't they leave something to the imagination? I sort of subscribe to her philosophy when it comes to writing sex.

Catherine Brady

#16. I come from an Irish Catholic family, and hell-raising is part of the DNA.

Brian Dennehy

#17. I am who I am: an Irish Catholic kid, working class from Long Island. And I made it big.

Bill O'Reilly

#18. I was born into an Irish Catholic family in the New York area in this great, wonderful, and safe country, but the Holocaust has always haunted me, and it has long stood as a stumbling block to faith. How could such a thing be? How is that consistent with the concept of a loving God?

James Comey

#19. I was raised Irish Catholic and went to Holy Names Academy, an all-girl's private Catholic school. I loved the nuns there and I love them to this day.

Kitty Kelley

#20. When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

Frank McCourt

#21. I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I'm an American - you know, you grow.

George Carlin

#22. The Irish Catholic side was married to the life of an actor and I found out acting could be a form of prayer.

Liam Neeson

#23. In 1953 there were two ways for an Irish Catholic boy to impress his parents: become a priest or attend Notre Dame.

Phil Donahue

#24. People do think I'm Jewish. But we're Irish Catholic. My father had a brogue.

Martin Short

#25. For an Irish-Catholic boy with a nudity hang-up, it was an island of terrible freedom in a sea of No.

John Valentine

#26. My mom's Jewish and my dad's Irish Catholic alcoholic, so I whine on the inside.

Margaret Smith

#27. In kindergarten, we had this Irish Catholic headmistress called Sister Leonie, and I remember she would tell us, say, to put the crayons in the box. I remember thinking, 'Why is everyone finding this so easy? Why should the crayons be in the box?'

Binyavanga Wainaina

#28. From the year of his birth in 1914 until the outbreak of war in 1941, my father lived in a mostly white, mostly working-class, mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

Tim O'Brien

#29. I went to a Catholic University and there's something about being a Catholic-American. You know, St. Patrick's Day is, I'm Irish-Catholic. There's alcoholism in my family. It's like I've got to be Catholic, right?

Jim Gaffigan

#30. I won the parental lottery. Most of the kids I grew up with either came from really fractured homes, or really violent ones. I went home to a very traditional, good Irish Catholic family.

Dennis Lehane

#31. I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel.

John Lydon

#32. In the era of security clearances, to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

#33. For a man to come right out and say he does not believe in the Old Testament, I think many Catholics across the nation as well as the world are offended by Bill O'Reilly claiming he's an Irish Catholic.

Stephen Bennett

#34. Every Irish person of my generation and earlier, we were raised Catholic and we'd have to learn it in school, we'd to learn the catechism by rote.

Cillian Murphy

#35. Explaining the Jews in a Catholic school when you're Irish is like having to explain your country's foreign policy while on a vacation in France. You don't know what you're talking about and no matter what you say, they're not going to like it anyway.

John William Tuohy

#36. It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.

John Bright

#37. I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater.

Bob Gunton

#38. Irish Catholics are more interested in the rosary beads than in the rosary ...

Bernadette Devlin

#39. They had far more in common than either realised. One was born Catholic, the other Protestant. One was born Irish, the other British. But neither was the greatest difference between them. One was born rich and the other poor.

Joseph O'Connor

#40. We do know for sure that good Irish Catholics followed their faith in the direction of inclusion, compassion, equality, justice, and a host of other Catholic values when they voted with the majority despite some clergymen's efforts to lead them astray.

Mary E. Hunt

#41. The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.

James Nesbitt

#42. The illicit Irish homemade spirit, poitin was frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which made its manufacture grave enough of a sin to require a bishop's absolution rather than that of the regular parish priest. Ah, the lengths the Irish will go to for "the demon drink!

Rashers Tierney

#43. I'm Irish. That means I'm Catholic. But, truth is, now I'm a retired Christian.

Peter O'Toole

#44. Growing up, I was your classic Catholic Irish kid. I went to mass every Sunday. Then in secondary school I went to boarding school, and there was mass seven days a week before breakfast - it may have put me off!

Deirdre O'Kane

#45. I've told you before I'm not guilty of anything; I'm just guilty, that's all.

Mike McCormack

#46. Malone had been raised by a lady both Irish and Catholic, in a good bourgeois home in which careless table manners were a sin, much less this storm in his heart.

Andrew Holleran

#47. I grew up in a very old-fashioned Roman Catholic, Italian-Irish family in Philly.

Bradley Cooper

#48. For me, being Catholic was who I was and who I am, just like I'm Irish and Slovak. It's just so ingrained in us.

Regina Brett